Another one of those pesky email hoaxes popped into our in-box today. It was the Simon Ashton hoax, with the warning forwarded by a well meaning friend. As we tell all our staff, collogues, customers and friends, the email hoax works because people think “better safe than sorry”
The amount of email that a typical hoax can generate is a major cost to organisations. Just think of a company with 60 employees; if each person takes a minute to read a hoax virus email, that will cost an hour of lost productivity. Then if half of them spend a couple of minutes forwarding it to their friends, that is another hour lost! Once a few people in your company have received a warning and mailed it to all their friends and colleagues, a mail overload can easily result.
We support the advice that companies should consider circulating a policy on virus hoaxes to all their staff, in an attempt to avoid the costs involved.
For a sample anti hoax virus policy click here to visit Sophos – Don’t fall for a virus hoax