Virus Warning Warning

I got an e-mail yesterday from someone who was afraid she might have passed a virus on to me, because she'd gotten a virus-warning e-mail from someone else. It starts off like this:

Sorry to say I may have given your computer a virus. Please review the following information in case it is in your system also.

Unfortunately a virus has been passed on to me by a contact. Since you are in my address book, there is a good chance you will find it in your computer too. My sincere apologies. The virus ( called jdbhmgr.exe ) is not detected by Norton or McAfee anti-virus systems. The virus sits quietly for 14 days before damaging the system. It is sent automatically by messenger and by the address book, whether or not you sent e-mail to you contacts.

It then directs you to look for the file, which is indicated by a teddy bear icon, and delete it to get rid of the virus.

Well, just in case anybody else has seen this and gotten panicky about it, I figured I'd pass along the real info on this "virus." Truth is, the message is a hoax. The file it's telling you to delete is a perfectly legitimate Windows file, not a virus at all. The good news is that deleting it doesn't really hurt anything, so at least if you've fallen prey to the hoax, you haven't done anything to harm your computer. Which doesn't mean that the hoax is harmless, of course. Spreading panic and getting people to send alarmist e-mails to everybody in their address books is really quite bad enough. Indeed, the e-mail itself is really a sort of virus, just one that requires a little bit of human intervention to spread.

There's more information on this at Symantec's web site, for anybody who doesn't want to just take my word for it. Which you probably shouldn't. Remember, folks, it's always good to check this stuff out for yourself.