In a message dated 9/23/02 8:16:41 PM Central Daylight Time, [email protected] writes: > Subj:PLEASE CHECK FOR A VIRUS THAT I MAY HAVE SENT YOU > Date:9/23/02 8:16:41 PM Central Daylight Time > From:<A HREF="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</A> > Reply-to:<A HREF="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</A> > To:<A HREF="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</A> > Sent from the Internet > > Hi everyone. Unfortunatley,I received the following > notice today from a friend. Sure enough I found the > teddybear virus and it is easy to remove. Please check > your computer. You are receiving this notice because > you are in my address book--family,friend .......... BeeJay has been the victim of a hoax. Don't follow the directions in his/her e-mail message. Before believing an alert, I make it a practice to go to one of the sites dedicated to helping us determine whether a virus warning is real or not -- sometimes, the "warning" is even designed to make us do bad things to our computers like this hoax does. (Don't panic if you followed instructions. The changes you made are fairly benign.) Below, is what Urban Legends (http://www.snopes.com) has to say about the so-called "jdbgmgr.exe" virus. (If you were unaware of websites dedicated to helping people learn the truth about hoaxes, contact me and I'll send you a list of a few of the better ones. Since not every hoax-tracking website discovers every hoax at the same time, I check additional websites if I don't find it at first.) Virus name: JDBGMGR.EXE. Status: Hoax. Example: [Collected on the Internet, 2002] Origins: Like the <A HREF="http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/sulfnbk.htm">SULFNBK.EXE</A> hoax, this bogus virus warning (also known as the "Bear Virus") attempts to lure gullible users into deleting perfectly innocuous, standard Windows files from their systems. In this case the target file is JDBGMGR.EXE, a Java Debug Manager program used by the Microsoft Java runtime engine. This file is included as part of a standard Windows installation and is not a "virus." (The icon for this file is a graphic of a bear like the one shown to the left.) If you deleted this file, don't sweat it -- JDBGMGR.EXE is only important to programmers who use Microsoft Visual J++ 1.1 to develop Java programs. Its absence will not cause your PC to stop working or interfere with your applications, so if you're not a Java developer, you don't have to worry about restoring it. Consider the experience a lesson learned about the perils of believing and acting upon unverified e-mail warnings. (Windows 2000 and Windows ME include a Windows File Protection (WFP) feature that will recover shared files such as JDBGMGR.EXE if they are overwritten or deleted, but users of other Windows operating systems can only retrieve JDBGMGR.EXE by reinstalling the Microsoft <A HREF="http://www.microsoft.com/java/vm/dl_vm40.htm">Virtual Machine</A> (VM) component.) See the link below for more information on and recovery procedures for JDBGMGR.EXE. Additional information: Microsoft Debugger Registrar for Java (Jdbgmgr.exe) Is Not a Virus (Microsoft) Last updated: 21 September 2002 The URL for this page is http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/jdbgmgr.htm Click <A HREF="http://www.snopes.com/cgi-bin/comments/sendpage.asp">here</A> to e-mail this page to a friend Urban Legends Reference Pages © 1995-2002 by Barbara and David P. Mikkelson This material may not be reproduced without permission