Serious Virus Risk

Dear AO members, i have recently come across a site named www.8march2003.com and it rambles on about some crack pot who found something that the government wants to keep under raps and you really need to see it for yourself. however the thing that concerns me is that the website is trying to gather popularity until a certain date (8th march 2003) where he/she will reveal all of these so called "secrets". i was just thinking that it is pluasable that after so long of gathering "believers" and on the forementioned date, that instead of revealing any secrets that a virus could be posted on the site.

this could lead to an epedemic because of the fact that so many people could be infected within 24hrs. to help support my case is the fact that instead of realeasing all of these secrets on one page, the creator has arranged for people to view certain pages, depending on which country they are from, which may or may not have something to do with the virus.

some of you out there will believe this guy and look forward to meeting aliens or what not. some of you will dismis it as you would any other crackpot, but to be on the serious side, this site could cause a real problem.

just wondering what the AO community was feeling about this?

Yours faithfuly,

James

lol it's all a spoof dude. This is from their disclaimer page :)

Quote:

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This site was originally posted as a piece of writing with purposeful clues and discrepancies to indicate its fictitious nature leading up to a pre-publicity campaign to see how much interest it might generate.

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and

Quote:

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If you still wish to follow this event, please enjoy it as a fictitious story leading up to what will be revealed on the above mentioned date. If there is enough interest, the original story may be re-posted as an optional link on this page within the next few weeks.

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El Diablo

2 things...

1) the site has a disclaimer talking about how it is a fictional story
2) underlying issue... browser beware!

I agree with you that this could pose problems if they attempted to load a virus, etc... but how is that any different than any other site out there? The only thing that this site has been able to do differently is create a little extra hype - hype that can be dismissed by reading the diclaimer (or using common sense).

Quote:

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Dear reader,

This site was originally posted as a piece of writing with purposeful clues and discrepancies to indicate its fictitious nature leading up to a pre-publicity campaign to see how much interest it might generate. Quite honestly the overwhelming response and attention was not expected, or at least not so quickly. That was why the site was posted several months ahead with the intention of it slowly gathering momentum, leading up to the actual revealing date.

Most people have sent emails indicating that they enjoyed the site and looked forward to finding out about the potential release of a variety of things such as a new movie, computer game, SLR camera, novel, camera film and the list goes on.

There are some that have taken this site too seriously, and it has been brought to my attention that innocent people have been implicated as the creators of this site. I therefore feel it is appropriate to make this announcement. As many have pointed out, if the story was for real it would have been shut down by now.

If you still wish to follow this event, please enjoy it as a fictitious story leading up to what will be revealed on the above mentioned date. If there is enough interest, the original story may be re-posted as an optional link on this page within the next few weeks.

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I want to ask sth that isn't about the story, but sth especially it's shown. Somewhere it says that if the cursor is moving someone is hacking you, is this true?

sorry guys for this post. either the disclaimer wasnt there when i read it(so long ago) or that i was too lazy to read it. hehe. anyway, thanks for the heads up.

but as bluebeard was saying, its true that any other site can have the same potential, i just thought it would make more sense to have a big publicity stunt first :P

yours faithfuly,

Trust_Not_123

It was a good post but the topic wasn't very helpful.