              G o o d   T i m e s   V i r u s  H o a x
                            ------------
         F r e q u e n t l y   A s k e d   Q u e s t i o n s


                            by Les Jones
                           macfaqol.com
                         lesjonessit.net

                          October 12, 1995


       This information may be freely reproduced in any medium,
              as long as the information is unmodified.


  -----------------
  October 12 Update
  -----------------

  The Good Times virus hoax is popping up again. I've received reports
  that the Infinite Loop version of the hoax has hit the U.S. Census
  Bureau and U.S. Department of Agriculture. People seeking information
  have been posting to the virus and security newsgroups on Usenet.

  The Good Times hoax shows no signs of going away. This FAQ seems to
  be the best antidote to outbreaks. I've updated the FAQ with new
  dates and updated URLs. I plan to post it to Usenet on a quarterly
  basis to keep it in circulation.


  --------
  Contents
  --------

  Is the Good Times email virus a hoax?
  Why should I believe the FAQ instead of the hoax?
  I'm new to the Internet. What is the Good Times virus hoax?
  What is the effect of the hoax?
  What was the CIAC bulletin?
  What did the first major warning (Happy Chanukah) say?
  What's the other major warning (ASCII)?
  What's the popular variation on ASCII (FCC or Infinite Loop)?
  Exactly when did the hoax start?
  Who started the hoax?
  Is an email virus possible?
  How can I protect myself from viruses in general?
  Where can I find anti-viral information on the Internet?
  Was the hoax a sort of virus itself?
  What's the best way to control a thought virus?
  What are some other hoaxes and urban legends on the Internet?
  Online References


  -------------------------------------
  Is the Good Times email virus a hoax?
  -------------------------------------

  Yes. It was a hoax in December of 1994, and it's still a hoax.

  America Online, government computer security agencies, and makers of
  anti-virus software have declared Good Times a hoax. See Online
  References at the end of the FAQ.

  Since the hoax began in December of 1994, no copy of the alleged
  virus has ever been found, nor has there been a single verified case
  of a viral attack.


  -------------------------------------------------
  Why should I believe the FAQ instead of the hoax?
  -------------------------------------------------

  Unlike the warnings that have been passed around, the FAQ is signed
  and dated. I've included my email address, and the email addresses of
  contributors, for verification. I've also provided online references
  at the end of the FAQ so that you can confirm this information for
  yourself.


  -----------------------------------------------------------
  I'm new to the Internet. What is the Good Times virus hoax?
  -----------------------------------------------------------

  The story is that a virus called Good Times is being carried by
  email. Just reading a message with "Good Times" in the subject line
  will erase your hard drive, or even destroy your computer's
  processor. Needless to say, it's a hoax, but a lot of people believed
  it.

  The original message ended with instructions to "Forward this to all
  your friends," and many people did just that. Warnings about Good
  Times have been widely distributed on mailing lists, Usenet
  newsgroups, and message boards.

  The original hoax started in early December of 1994. It sprang up
  again in March of 1995. In mid-April, a new version of the hoax that
  mentioned a FCC report began circulating. Worried that Good Times
  would never go away, I decided to write the FAQ. These worries proved
  valid when the hoax began popping up again in October of 1995.


  -------------------------------
  What is the effect of the hoax?
  -------------------------------

  For those who already know it's a hoax, it's a nuisance to read the
  repeated warnings. For people who don't know any better, it causes
  needless concern and lost productivity.

  The virus hoax infects mailing lists, bulletin boards, and Usenet
  newsgroups. Worried system administrators needlessly worry their
  employees by posting dire warnings. The hoax is not limited to the
  United States. It has appeared in several English-speaking and
  non-English-speaking countries. One reader sent me an English
  transcription of a radio broadcast in Malta.

  Adam J Kightley (adamjkogs.susx.ac.uk) said, "The cases of
  'infection' I came across all tended to result from the message
  getting into the hands of senior non-computing personnel. Those with
  the ability and authority to spread it widely, without the knowledge
  to spot its nonsensical content."

  Some of the companies that have reportedly fallen for the hoax
  include AT&T, CitiBank, NBC, Hughes Aircraft, Texas Instruments, and
  dozens or hundreds of others. There have been outbreaks at numerous
  colleges.

  The U.S. government has not been immune. Some of the government
  agencies that have reportedly fallen victim to the hoax include the
  Department of Defense, the FCC, NASA, the USDA, U.S. Census Bureau,
  and various national labs. I've confirmed outbreaks at the Department
  of Health and Human Services, though they had the good sense to
  question the hoax, and ask for more information on Usenet, before
  passing the hoax along to their omployees.

  The virus hoax has occasionally escaped into the popular media.
  ez018982
etty.ucdavis.edu reports that on April 4, 1995, during the
  Tom Sullivan show on KFBK 1530 AM radio in Sacramento, California, a
  police officer warned listeners not to read email labeled "Good
  Times", and to report the sender to the police. Other radio stations,
  including Australia's ABC radio, have also spread the hoax.

  There are scattered reports of the virus spreading via Faxnet, that
  low-tech network of secretaries and bored knowledge workers that
  traffics in cartoons and dumb blonde jokes.


  ---------------------------
  What was the CIAC bulletin?
  ---------------------------

  On December 6, 1994, the U.S. Department of Energy's CIAC (Computer
  Incident Advisory Capability) issued a bulletin declaring the Good
  Times virus a hoax and an urban legend. The bulletin was widely
  quoted as an antidote to the hoax. The original document can be found
  at the address in Online References at the end of the FAQ. Note that
  the document went through several minor revisions, with 94-04c of
  December 8 being the most recent.

  Like all quoted material in the FAQ, it includes the original
  spelling and punctuation. Because some of the lines in the CIAC
  report are rather long, they will appear broken.


  ----Begin quoted material----
  THE "Good Times" VIRUS IS AN URBAN LEGEND

  In the early part of December, CIAC started to receive information
  requests about a supposed "virus" which could be contracted via
  America OnLine, simply by reading a message.


  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
  | Here is some important information. Beware of a file called
  Goodtimes.    |
  |
        |
  |  Happy Chanukah everyone, and be careful out there. There is a
  virus on   |
  | America Online being sent by E-Mail.  If you get anything called
  "Good    |
  | Times", DON'T read it or download it.  It is a virus that will
  erase your |
  | hard drive.  Forward this to all your friends.  It may help them a
  lot.   |

  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

  THIS IS A HOAX.  Upon investigation, CIAC has determined that this
  message originated from both a user of America Online and a student
  at a university at approximately the same time, and it was meant to
  be a hoax.

  CIAC has also seen other variations of this hoax, the main one is
  that any electronic mail message with the subject line of "xxx-1"
  will infect your computer.

  This rumor has been spreading very widely.  This spread is due mainly
  to the fact that many people have seen a message with "Good Times" in
  the header. They delete the message without reading it, thus
  believing that they have saved themselves from being attacked. These
  first-hand reports give a false sense of credibility to the alert
  message.

  There has been one confirmation of a person who received a message
  with "xxx-1" in the header, but an empty message body.  Then, (in a
  panic, because he had heard the alert), he checked his PC for viruses
  (the first time he checked his machine in months) and found a
  pre-existing virus on his machine. He incorrectly came to the
  conclusion that the E-mail message gave him the virus (this
  particular virus could NOT POSSIBLY have spread via an E-mail
  message).  This person then spread his alert.

  As of this date, there are no known viruses which can infect merely
  through reading a mail message.  For a virus to spread some program
  must be executed. Reading a mail message does not execute the mail
  message.  Yes, Trojans have been found as executable attachments to
  mail messages, the most notorious being the IBM VM Christmas Card
  Trojan of 1987, also the TERM MODULE Worm (reference CIAC Bulletin
  B-7) and the GAME2 MODULE Worm (CIAC Bulletin B-12). But this is not
  the case for this particular "virus" alert.

  If you encounter this message being distributed on any mailing lists,
  simply ignore it or send a follow-up message stating that this is a
  false rumor.

  Karyn Pichnarczyk
  CIAC Team
  ciac
lnl.gov

  ----End quoted material----

  Note: Karyn is now with Cisco. Her new email address is
  karynisco.com.

  The CIAC report was wrong when it stated that the hoax was started by
  "a user of America Online and a student at a university." See "Who
  started the hoax."

  ----------------------------------------------
  What's the first version of the warning (FYI)?
  ----------------------------------------------

  I have an early version of the hoax that dates back to November 15,
  1994, when it was posted to the TECH-LAW mailing list. This is
  currently the earliest known example of Good Times. See also "When
  did the hoax start?"


  ---Begin quoted material----

  FYI, a file, going under the name "Good Times" is being sent to some
  Internet users who subscribe to on-line services (Compuserve, Prodigy
  and America On Line).  If you should receive this file, do not
  download it! Delete it immediately.  I understand that there is a
  virus included in that file, which if downloaded to your personal
  computer, will ruin all of your files.

  ----End quoted material---

  One person remembers seeing Good Times as far back as April or May of
  1994, but there is no supporting evidence for that claim. For now,
  the FYI message qualifies as the earliest prototype of Good Times.


  ------------------------------------------------------
  What did the first major warning (Happy Chanukah) say?
  ------------------------------------------------------

  This is the canonical Happy Chanukah message as I received it on
  December 2, 1994, and as it was quoted in the CIAC report, though
  it's not the earliest message. This message was largely responsible
  for sparking the December Good Times panic.

  ----Begin quoted material----

  Here is some important information. Beware of a file called
  Goodtimes.

  Happy Chanukah everyone, and be careful out there.There is a virus on
  America Online being sent by E-Mail.  If you get anything called
  "Good Times", DON'T read it or download it.  It is a virus that will
  erase your hard drive.  Forward this to all your friends.  It may
  help them a lot.

  ----End quoted material----


  ---------------------------------------
  What's the other major warning (ASCII)?
  ---------------------------------------

  The "happy Chanukah" greeting in the original message dates it, so
  more recent hoax eruptions have used a different message. The one
  below can be identified because it claims that simply loading Good
  Times into the computer's ASCII buffer can activate the virus, so I
  call it ASCII.

  Karyn Pichnarczyk (karynisco.com) remembers the ASCII message from
  the original hoax in December of 1994, though I never saw it. Mikko
  Hypponen (Mikko.Hypponenatafellows.fi) sent me a copy of this
  warning that dates back to December 2, 1994. The Infinite Loop
  variety of ASCII is now the basis for the most common warnings.


  ----Begin quoted material----

  Thought you might like to know...

  Apparently , a new computer virus has been engineered by a user of
  America Online that is unparalleled in its destructive capability.
  Other, more well-known viruses such as Stoned, Airwolf, and
  Michaelangelo pale in comparison to the prospects of this newest
  creation by a warped mentality.

  What makes this virus so terrifying is the fact that no program needs
  to be exchanged for a new computer to be infected.  It can be spread
  through the existing e-mail systems of the InterNet.

  Luckily, there is one sure means of detecting what is now known as
  the "Good Times" virus.  It always travels to new computers the same
  way - in a text e-mail message with the subject line reading simply
  "Good Times". Avoiding infection is easy once the file has been
  received - not reading it. The act of loading the file into the mail
  server's ASCII buffer causes the "Good Times" mainline program to
  initialize and execute.

  The program is highly intelligent - it will send copies of itself to
  everyone whose e-mail address is contained in a received-mail file or
  a sent-mail file, if it can find one.  It will then proceed to trash
  the computer it is running on.

  The bottom line here is - if you receive a file with the subject line
  "Good TImes", delete it immediately!  Do not read it!  Rest assured
  that whoever's name was on the "From:" line was surely struck by the
  virus.   Warn your friends and local system users of this newest
  threat to the InterNet!  It could save them a lot of time and money.

  ----End quoted material---


  -------------------------------------------------------------
  What's the popular variation on ASCII (FCC or Infinite Loop)?
  -------------------------------------------------------------

  You rarely see the pure ASCII version any more. One common variation
  mentions an FCC memo, and claims that Good Times can destroy a
  computer's processor by placing the processor in a "nth-complexity
  infinite binary loop," which is a fancy-sounding bit of science
  fiction. This is by far the most common version nowadays, and
  consists of ASCII with the following additional material:


  ----Begin quoted material----

  The FCC released a warning last Wednesday concerning a matter of
  major importance to any regular user of the InterNet.  Apparently, a
  new computer virus has been engineered by a user of America Online
  that is unparalleled in its destructive capability.  Other, more
  well-known viruses such as Stoned, Airwolf, and Michaelangelo pale in
  comparison to the prospects of this newest creation by a warped
  mentality.

  What makes this virus so terrifying, said the FCC, is the fact that
  no program needs to be exchanged for a new computer to be infected.
  It can be spread through the existing e-mail systems of the InterNet.
  Once a computer is infected, one of several things can happen.  If
  the computer contains a hard drive, that will most likely be
  destroyed. If the program is not stopped, the computer's processor
  will be placed in an nth-complexity infinite binary loop - which can
  severely damage the processor if left running that way too long.
  Unfortunately, most novice computer users will not realize what is
  happening until it is far  too late.

  ----End quoted material---


  --------------------------------
  Exactly when did the hoax start?
  --------------------------------

  I thought I knew, but new evidence has come to light. In the original
  FAQ, I wrote the following paragraphs :

  ----
  December 2, 1994 is often quoted as the beginning of the hoax, but
  some of the AOL forward message headers in the copy I received put
  the date at December 1. One non-AOL header is dated November 29,
  though that date could easily have been forged.

  Also, notice the text of the original message as it was sent to me,
  and quoted in the CIAC report:

  Here is some important information. Beware of a file called
  Goodtimes.

  Happy Chanukah everyone, and be careful out there.There is a virus on
  America Online being sent by E-Mail.  If you get anything called
  "Good Times", DON'T read it or download it.  It is a virus that will
  erase your hard drive.  Forward this to all your friends.  It may
  help them a lot.

  The first paragraph suggests that someone was forwarding the
  information in the second paragraph. A seasonal greeting like "Happy
  Chanukah" is almost never placed in the second paragraph of a letter,
  suggesting even more strongly that this message was repeating
  information from someone else.
  ----

  After reading the FAQ, several people reported earlier instances of
  the hoax. On November 15, 1994, Rich Lavoie (lavoiewt.com) posted
  it to the TECH-LAW mailing list. Rodney Knight (r.j.knightl.ac.uk)
  saw that message on a newsgroup, and forwarded the warning to the
  POSTCARD mailing list. November 15 is currently the earliest
  confirmed sighting.

  Anthony Altieri (magnetopix.net) recollected the hoax as far back
  as April or May of 1994, but that recollection is so far
  unsubstantiated by any evidence.


  ---------------------
  Who started the hoax?
  ---------------------

  We don't know who started the hoax. You'll meet people who think they
  know who started it, or where it started. They are mis-informed. Show
  them the FAQ. I've seen some people claim that the hoaxsters were
  arrested and convicted. This is incorrect.

  The CIAC report stated that the hoax was started by "a user of
  America Online and a student at a university." I asked Karyn
  Pichnarczyk about that. During the December outbreak of Happy
  Chanukah, several people tried to trace the hoax by following
  messages headers. When America Online traced headers, they stopped at
  an AOL account. When Nathan Gilliatt (gilliattc.duke.edu) traced
  headers in different messages, the messages seemed to stop at
  Swarthmore College. Karyn said she didn't know who to believe, so she
  said that the virus was started by "a user of America Online and a
  student at a university." We now know that "Happy Chanukah" wasn't
  the original message, so tracing headers was a futile attempt to
  trace the origin of the hoax.

  Asking who started the hoax assumes that someone consciously started
  the hoax. It's remotely possible that Good Times is a highly
  distorted report of some real or semi-real event. After being told
  and retold, the story became the Good Times hoax as we know it. The
  Telephone Game gone mad. The problem with this theory is that it's
  probably impossible to prove.

  AOL postmaster David O'Donnell (PMDAtroposol.com) has another
  theory about the origins of the hoax. David says that there was once
  a Good Times chain letter going around. To stop the chain letter,
  David's theory goes, someone claimed that the chain letter contained
  a virus, and warned people to delete any email with "Good Times" in
  the subject line. Once again, however, there is no evidence to
  support this theory.


  ---------------------------
  Is an email virus possible?
  ---------------------------

  The short answer is no, not the way Good Times was described.

  The long answer is that this is a difficult question that's open to
  nit-picking. Keep three things in mind when considering the question:

  * A virus is operating system-specific. DOS viruses don't affect
  Macintoshes, and vice versa. That greatly limits the destructive
  power of viruses. (And notice that none of the Good Times warnings
  mention which types of computers are affected. That omission set off
  many people's hoax detectors.)

  * A virus, by definition, can't exist by itself. It must infect an
  executable program. To transmit a virus by email, someone would have
  to infect a file and attach the file to the email message. To
  activate the virus, you would have to download and decode the file
  attachment, then run the infected program. In that situation, the
  email message is just a carrier for an infected file, just like a
  floppy disk carrying an infected file.

  * Some of the situations that people have dreamed up involve Trojan
  horses rather than viruses. A virus can only exist inside another
  program, which then automatically infects other programs. A Trojan  horse is a program that pretends to do something useful, but instead
  does something nefarious. Trojans aren't infectious, so they're much
  less common and much less destructive than viruses.

  There are some email programs that can be set to automatically
  download a file attachment, decode it, and execute the file
  attachment. If you use such a program, you would be well advised to
  disable the option to automatically execute file attachments.

  You should, of course, be wary of any file attachments a stranger
  sends you. At the least, you should check such file attachments for
  viruses before running them.


  -------------------------------------------------
  How can I protect myself from viruses in general?
  -------------------------------------------------

  Use a virus checker regularly. Freeware, shareware, and commercial
  anti-virus programs are widely available. Which program you use isn't
  as important as how you use it. Most people get into trouble because
  they never bother to check their computer for viruses.

  Most viruses spread through floppy disks, so isolating yourself from
  online services and the Internet will not protect you from viruses.
  In fact, you're probably safer if you're online, simply because
  you'll have access to anti-viral software and information.


  --------------------------------------------------------
  Where can I find anti-viral information on the Internet?
  --------------------------------------------------------

  Usenet newsgroups
  _________________
  comp.virus -- the Usenet gateway for VIRUS-L (below)


  Mailing lists
  _____________
  VIRUS-L is a moderated list for discussions of viruses and anti-viral
  products. To subscribe, send email to listserv
ehigh.edu. In the
  body of the message, include the line "sub virus-l your-real-name"
  (without the quotes).


  FTP sites
  _________
  cert.org in pub/virus-l/docs/

  Contains information about viruses and anti-virus products, with
  pointers to other FTP sites.


  World Wide Web
  ____________________________________
  http://www.singnet.com.sg/staff/lorna/Virus
  (Note: the V must be capitalized!.)


  ------------------------------------
  Was the hoax a sort of virus itself?
  ------------------------------------

  Yes, but it wasn't a computer virus. It was more like a social virus
  or a thought virus.

  When someone on alt.folklore.urban asked if the virus was for real,
  Clay Shirky (claysanix.com) answered:

  "Its for real. Its an opportunistic self-replicating email virus
  which tricks its host into replicating it, sometimes adding as many
  as 200,000 copies at a go. It works by finding hosts with defective
  parsing apparatus which prevents them from understanding that a piece
  of email which says there is an email virus and then asking them to
  remail the message to all their friends is the virus itself."

  Shirky eloquently described what a lot of people were thinking. So
  what is a virus? To a biologist, a virus is a snippet of genetic
  material that must infect a host organism to survive and reproduce.
  To be contagious, a virus usually carries instructions that cause the
  host to engage in certain pathological activities (such as sneezing
  and coughing) that spread the infection to other organisms.

  To a computer programmer, a virus is a snippet of computer code that
  must infect a host program to spread. To be contagious, a computer
  virus usually causes the host program to engage in certain
  pathological activities that spread the infection to other programs

  From this perspective, it's easy to see the Good Times hoax as a sort
  of thought virus. To be contagious, a thought virus causes the host
  to engage in certain pathological activities that spread the
  infection.

  In the case of Good Times, the original strain (happy Chanukah)
  explicitly told people to "forward this to all your friends." The
  other major viral strain (infinite loop) encourages people to "Please
  be careful and forward this mail to anyone you care about," and "Warn
  your friends and local system users of this newest threat to the
  InterNet!"

  Likewise, the stories of an FCC modem tax encourage people to tell
  their friends and post the warning on other BBSes. David Rhodes' Make
  Money Fast scam instructs people to re-post the message to as many as
  ten bulletin boards.

  In _The Selfish Gene_ (1976, University of Oxford Press), Oxford
  evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins extends the principles in his
  book from biology to human culture. To make the transition, Dawkins
  proposes a cultural replicator analogous to genes. He calls these
  replicators memes.

  "Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions,
  ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate
  themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperm or
  eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from
  brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called
  imitation. ... As my colleague N. K. Humphrey neatly summed up an
  earlier draft of this chapter: "...memes should be regarded as living
  structures, not just metaphorically, but technically. When you plant
  a fertile meme in my mind you literally parasitize my brain, turning
  it into a vehicle for the meme's propagation in just the way that a
  virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell.""

  Amazingly, when I read alt.folklore.computers looking for research
  material, two people had already mentioned Dawkins' memes. One of
  them referred to an article in the April 8, 1995 _New Scientist_
  about something called the Meme Research Group. (The article
  erroneously stated that the group is at the University of California,
  San Francisco. In fact, they are at Simon Fraser University in
  British Columbia.)

  The Meme Research Group is collecting chain letters to analyze them.
  The more copies they get, the more information they have to analyze.
  Send those unwanted chain letters to memecottlabsgi.chem.sfu.ca.

  I am not a memeticist, and a real memeticist might take umbrage at my
  explanation of the concept. To learn more, visit the alt.memetics
  newsgroup on Usenet, and especially the alt.memetics home page on the
  World Wide Web (http://www.xs4all.nl/~hingh/alt.memetics/). Though
  we've talked about memes in terms of viruses (a common analogy), the
  concept of a meme is neither good nor bad. The idea of "Do unto
  others as you would have them do unto you" is as much a meme as the
  Good Times hoax.


  -----------------------------------------------
  What's the best way to control a thought virus?
  -----------------------------------------------

  Create a counter virus like this one as an antidote. To make the
  counter virus contagious, include instructions such as, "The Good
  Times email virus is a hoax. If anyone repeats the hoax, please show
  them the FAQ."


  -------------------------------------------------------------
  What are some other hoaxes and urban legends on the Internet?
  -------------------------------------------------------------

  The FCC Modem Tax

  Every so often someone posts a dire warning that the FCC is
  considering a tax on modems and online services. The warning
  encourages you to tell your friends so they can take political
  action. It's a hoax. It's been going on for the five years I've been
  online, and probably much longer. If you'll notice, the warnings
  don't include a date or a bill number.


  Make Money Fast

  If you haven't seen a Make Money Fast message, call your local
  anthropology department. They might be interested in studying you.
  Devised by David Rhodes in 1987 or 1988, Make Money Fast (sometimes
  distributed on BBSes as a file called fastcash.txt) is an electronic
  version of a chain letter pyramid scheme. You're supposed to send
  money to the ten people on the list, then add your name to the list
  and repost the chain letter, committing federal wire fraud in the
  process. Posting a Make Money Fast message is one sure way to lose
  your Internet account. (Information from the Make Money Fast FAQ by
  ewlanix.com.)


  Craig Shergold needs your get well cards

  Craig Shergold is a UK resident who was dying of cancer. He wanted to
  get in the Guinness Book of World Records for having received the
  most get well cards. When people heard of the poor boy's wish, they
  began sending him postcards. And they kept sending him postcards, and
  never stopped. Shergold is now in full remission. He was listed in
  the Guinness Book of World Records in 1991. He really does not want
  your postcards any more, and neither does his hometown post office.

  These are just the urban legends that you're likely to encounter on
  the Internet. There are many more in real life that you probably
  believe. I won't give them away, but here are some clues: peanut
  butter, Neiman Marcus/Mrs. Fields, Rod Stewart, and the Newlywed
  Game. For more information, read the alt.folklore.urban FAQ, listed
  in Online References at the end of the FAQ.


  -----------------
  Online References
  -----------------

  CIAC Notes 94-05, 95-09, and especially 94-04
  ---------------------------------------------
  FTP to ciac.llnl.gov and look in the pub/ciac/notes directory. The
  URL is ftp://ciac.llnl.gov/pub/ciac/notes/

  The URL for the CIAC home page on the World Wide Web is:
  http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/


  alt.folklore.urban FAQ
  --------------------------
  Available via FTP from cathouse.org in the
  /pub/cathouse/urban.legends/AFU.faq directory.

  Also available on the World Wide Web at
  http://cathouse.org/UrbanLegends/AFUFAQ/


  The Good Times Virus Hoax Mini FAQ
  ----------------------------------
  A greatly simplified version of this FAQ. At two pages, it's short
  enough for message boards, faxes, mailing lists, and people with
  short attention spans. FTP to usit.net and look in the pub/lesjones
  directory. The URL is
  ftp://usit.net/pub/lesjones/Good-Times-Virus-Hoax-Mini-FAQ.txt .


  The Good Times Virus Hoax FAQ (this document)
  ---------------------------------------------
  Via FTP:

  ftp://usit.net/pub/lesjones/good-times-virus-hoax-faq.txt
  ftp://users.aol.com/macfaq/good-times-virus-hoax-faq.txt

  On the World Wide Web:

  http://www.tcp.co.uk/tcp/good-times/index.html -- excellent hypertext
  http://www.singnet.com.sg/staff/lorna/Virus -- lots of virus info
  (Note: the V must be capitalized.)
  http://www.nsm.smcm.edu/News/GTHoax.html

  On America Online:

  in the file libraries at keyword "virus"

  By email:

  Send email to archiveconn.com with REQUEST GT_VIRUS.TXT in the
  subject line. The FAQ should arrive by email within an hour or two.

--         |  macfaqol.com   | AOL, ClarisWorks and ZTerm FAQs| Les Jones  | lesjonessit.net |  ftp://usit.net/pub/lesjones/  |


