Have you ever received an email that reads:

"You may receive an apparently harmless email with a Power Point presentation "Life is beautiful." If you receive it DO NOT OPEN THE FILE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, and delete it immediately. If you open this file, a message will appear on your screen saying: "It is too late now, your life is no longer beautiful."

These are called V.I.W. emails or Very Important Warning emails for short. If you receive a V.I.W. email like this, giving you a V.I.W. to avoid a virus laden - Ebola carrying - hard drive exploding email, should you...

     a) Forward it to everyone in your address book and claim your Brownie Points for the week.
     b) Think, "Yeah, roll on virus email, I'd love to slaughter this milk crate masquerading as a PC."
     c) Delete it.
     d) What's an email?

Yo, pointy heads, the correct answer is Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect Anything Like 200 Brownie Points, just treat it like you would an email from your ex and trash it, (answer c, for those of you who like to do things by the book).

However, if you're one of the 17 trillion of people who pass on emails like this and get a thrill from doing something altruistic (or, as the case may be, feel a bit depressed at the lack of people in your address book to forward it too), then you're not alone.

Unfortunately...

The desired outcome for the creators of the V.I.W. email is that it gets forwarded.

Why? Well, certain people that partake in mature pleasures such as prank phone calls, PC Magazine and writing web tips get awfully excited about the idea of their little hoax web message reaching 17 trillion inboxes and the time wastage for therein.

How to spot a V.I.W. and their Ugly Cousins

These not so elusive beasties take a few forms, be aware that they aren't all of the Your Hard Drive Will Vapourise If You Open the Life Is Beautiful Email variety. Some promise luck if you pass the email on to 20 friends in 5 minutes (presuming you have 20 friends) and warn that woe will betide you if you delete the email because then Your Hard Drive Really Will Vapourise.

To make triple sure you're doin' the right thing by deleting the V.I.W. or its mutations check out hoaxbusters and scope the index.

Impact

Some reputable hoax-busters explain in rounded and general (i.e. financial) terms why not to pass these babies around. "The cost and risk associated with hoaxes may not seem to be that high, and isn't when you consider the cost of handling one hoax on one machine," they say. "However, if you consider everyone that receives a hoax, that small cost gets multiplied into some pretty significant costs. For example, if everyone on the Internet were to receive one hoax message and spend one minute reading and discarding it, the cost would be something like: 50,000,000 people @ 1/60 hour @ $50/hour = $41.7 million."

What to do if you get a V.I.W. Email

Delete, erase, vapourise, liquidate, destroy and terminate it with extreme prejudice forthwith.

Find Out More

For those of you incensed at the sheer scale of the wastage of so much office time and want to know all about these beasties check out hoaxbusters.