These are written up in my own words. I don't pass the warnings themselves along, not even here, because the whole point is to stop passing them along. The date is the first copy I got. "Copies" is how many landed in my mailbox in all, from teachers, office staff, two board members and, every time, my Aunt Sylvia. The squares refer to the card.

Back to the Card · How to Answer Your Aunt Nicely

Said that an e-mail greeting card, sent by somebody pretending to be your friend, would wipe your hard drive and every floppy in the room the moment you opened the message. Said a big computer company and a big online service had both confirmed it, and that it was worse than Good Times.

Squares: B-3, B-7, B-9, B-12, B-14, I-17, I-26, O-62, O-66, FREE
Call: BINGO, straight down the B column. A perfect specimen.

The funny part: that same week, Happy99 showed up for real, as an attachment. Nobody warned me about that one. Three people ran it to see the fireworks.

Warned about a screen saver of dancing cartoon animals being offered by e-mail. Said that if you even looked at the message, the screen saver would erase your drive and then mail out your passwords. Said there was no cure and your antivirus couldn't catch it.

Squares: I-17, I-21, I-24, I-26, I-30, N-38, B-12, O-62
Call: BINGO, down the I column.

Note: Somewhere in here is a fair point. Don't install programs strangers mail you. But a screen saver that hurts you by being looked at would be a neat trick.

Melissa was real, and it hit that Friday. By Monday morning a warning was going around that Melissa had sisters, more viruses with girls' names, and that these new ones didn't need you to open anything: just reading a message from one of them would erase your drive. It listed the names. None of them were on any virus list then or since.

Squares: B-3, I-21, FREE, G-58, O-74, plus B-12, I-24, N-44, G-47, G-52, O-62, O-66
Call: BINGO, corner to corner.

Note: This is how it usually goes. A real virus makes the news, and a phony one rides in on its coattails, and the phony one gets forwarded more than the real one ever did. My answer that week went out to all 1,800 teachers: the real one is a Word attachment, so don't open attachments you aren't expecting, and that's all.

This is the hard kind, the half-true kind. CIH is a real virus, and it really was set to go off on April 26. But the warning said that every computer in the world would be ruined that day just by being switched on, and that everybody should unplug for the day to be safe.

Squares: B-14, N-44, I-26
Call: no bingo. HALF TRUE.

Note: The truth was smaller: it only hurt a computer that already had the virus on it, from running an infected program. The fix was an up-to-date antivirus scan, which we'd already done. Four teachers unplugged their classroom computers anyway that Monday and taught from the chalkboard. I heard the kids did fine.

Warned not to open any message with "Summer Reading" in the subject line, because a virus by that name would reformat your drive, could not be stopped, and slipped right past every virus program. It said it had been on the news. This one arrived, I am not making it up, the same week our librarians sent out the summer reading lists. Two of the librarians got calls asking if they were trying to break the computers.

Squares: O-62, O-66, O-69, O-71, O-74, I-30, N-38, B-12
Call: BINGO, down the O column.

No bingo here, because this one was real, and the warning was mine. I sent the whole district a short note: there's an attachment called zipped_files.exe going around that looks like a reply to your own mail; don't run it; call me if you did.

Squares: G-47
Call: REAL. Update your antivirus.

Note: The 17 copies were my own warning, coming back to me with FW: FW: FW: on the front, from people who wanted to make sure I knew. I knew. I gave myself the G-47 square and had a good laugh.

An e-mail postcard "from a friend on vacation" that would erase your drive, scramble your address book and burn out your modem if you read it. A slow month; the teachers were off, so it was mostly the district office and Aunt Sylvia.

Squares: B-3, I-17, N-33, G-47, O-62, B-12, FREE
Call: BINGO, across the top row.

My favorite of the year. The week the teachers came back, a warning went around not to open any message titled "Welcome Back," because it was a virus that would destroy your hard drive and your monitor. The district office sends a message titled "Welcome Back" every August. So does every principal. So, this year, did I.

Squares: 23 of 25. Every one but O-66 and G-60.
Call: BINGO eight ways, and very nearly blackout.

Note: I had to send out a memo explaining that my memo was not a virus. Then somebody forwarded the memo with the warning attached underneath it, and for one afternoon nobody knew what to believe, me included.

Said a message titled "Y2K Test" was going around that would set your computer's clock ahead to January 1, 2000 and lock it up for good. Said two big computer companies had confirmed it and you should forward it before midnight.

Squares: B-9, I-24, FREE, G-55, O-69, plus B-3, B-12, I-26, N-44, O-62
Call: BINGO, across the middle.

Note: We have spent two years getting this district ready for January 1. I promise you, if a single e-mail could do what this one claimed, I would have heard about it by now.

My Aunt Sylvia is 62 and sharp as a tack, and she has sent me every warning on this page. She sends them because she loves me and doesn't want my computer to blow up. That's worth remembering when you hit Reply. Here's what I've learned:

1. Thank her first. She was looking out for you. Say so.
2. Reply to her only. Not to the two hundred names in the To: line. Nobody likes being corrected in front of two hundred people, and your aunt has a bridge club.
3. Give her one reason, not ten. Mine is always the same: the real viruses come as attachments you have to open, and plain messages can't hurt you by being read. One reason she can remember beats a lecture she'll skim.
4. Don't say "hoax" in the first sentence. Say it in the second.
5. Give her something to do instead. "If you want to help, make sure your virus program is up to date" turns her worry into something useful.
6. Never, ever send her this bingo card. I made that mistake in April. She marked it, mailed it back to me with a BINGO across the top, and forwarded the card to her whole list as a warning about "a dangerous new game."

Here's about what I wrote her in August, for "Welcome Back":

She wrote back the same night: "Thank you, honey. I'll tell everybody." Then she did. To this day I don't know if she told them it was a hoax or told them to watch out for me.