Hoax Warnings


	Alphabetical Index

NAME:	Blue Mountain
ALIAS:	Blue Mountain Arts

UPDATE (2003-05-07 13:30 GMT)

The Cult worm sends messages with the following characteristics:

Subject:

 Hi, I sent you an eCard from BlueMountain.com

Body:

 To view your eCard, open the attachment

 If you have any comments or questions, please visit
 http://www.bluemountain.com/customer/index.pd

 Thanks for using BlueMountain.com.

And an attachment containing the worm. The attachement must not be opened and the message should be inmediately deleted.

Legitimate eCards from BlueMountain don't contain attachments.

Hoax information follows:

This is a hoax about a virus in the Blue Mountain Arts web greeting cards. No such virus exists, and since these greeting cards are not programs but simple web pages, they can not contain viruses anyway.

Below is a statement from the Executive Director of Blue Mountain Arts:

Date: Sun, 07 Mar 1999 15:29:02 -0800 From: jpschutz@bluemountain.com To: Anti-Virus-Support@F-Secure.com,Anti-Virus-Sales@F-Secure.com

Hello. I enjoyed your web page as a great resource on this matter.

It is my unfortunate responsibility to inform you that bluemountain.com is currently the target of a hoax "virus warning." We received our first reports of the warning on February 25th, and we hoped it would go away. Instead, it is spreading FAST and we have received over 500 emails from concerned people. We think that there are probably tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people who have received this false "warning" by now, and we are at wits end about how to fight this unseen enemy.

A little background on us: Blue Mountain Arts is a greeting card and poetry publishing company founded in 1970 by my parents, the poet Susan Polis Schutz and the artist Stephen Schutz, PhD. My father is the creative director for the website, and is particularly troubled by these false rumors. We launched our website in 1996 offering free electronic greeting cards, and the growth has really taken off. According to the January Mediametrix figures, Bluemountain.com was the 12th most trafficed Internet site overall.

This is what the first reports said, although there are now several variations:

        Just received a call from family.  A friend of theirs opened a
        card from Blue Mountain Cards and system crashed.

        Do not open Blue Mountain Cards until further notice. Virus
        has infiltrated their system..pass it on....."

It is short and to the point, but don't underestimate its efficacy. To grow the speed it has grown, I strongly suspect that a person or persons are actively spamming this warning around, but even if they stop it will no doubt live on for months or years. Once one of these things starts, all you can to is try to educate people about it to minimize the damage.

This rumor is COMPLETELY untrue. Bluemountain.com is and will always remain a safe site. It is very frustrating and difficult for us to dispel these rumors, but please help us in doing so by assuring people that there is no way the bluemountain.com can spread a virus. Our electronic greeting cards are simply web pages that your view with your browser. Our email notifications are only text messages without any attached files. When you send or receive cards from our site, you do not actually download to your computer any file which may contain a virus.

Bluemountain.com has a very strict privacy policy, and we do not gather and use email addresses of people who use our service. We do not initiate any emails, but rather people use our service to send email cards to loved ones. Our efforts are very grassroots and idealistic, and that's why I'm particularly disappointed that we would be targeted like this.

Besides having received the infamous "good times" warning and several others over the years, I have been blissfully ignorant of hoaxes like this. Now, whether we like it or not, we will need to spend a significant portion of our time fighting these absurd rumors. We would greatly appreciate anything you can do to help, like posting this information to your website and telling friends and media about this hoax. Thanks! L

Peace and love,

        Jared P. Schutz, Executive Director
        Blue Mountain Arts