July 20, 2005
Hoax leaves people cold on ICE
What a rotten thing to do! Just last week, we reported on a wonderful campaign called ICE (In Case of Emergency), encouraging people to store personal details on their mobile phones to help identify victims of accidents and disasters and now, it seems a milicious hoax is circulating in the UK, warning people that they are at risk of a mobile phone virus if they decide to create ICE entries on their phones.
"Because so many people have embraced the idea of ICE, these emails are causing real anxiety amongst the public and proving a real headache for the East Anglian Ambulance Trust (EAAT).
Here is an example of the hoax email message:
"You know the email that's gone round saying put ICE then a contact number in case of emergency? Well don't do it cos....
Be very careful with this one - although the intention is great it is unfortunately phase one of a phone based virus that is laying a path for propagating very quickly. Passing it on is part of the virus interestingly, such is the deviousness of the people who write these things.
We have already seen the "second phase" where a program is sent as part of a ring-tone download that goes into your address book and looks for something it recognises - you've guessed it, an address book entry marked "ICE or I.C.E." or whatever. It then sends itself to the "ICE list", charging you for the privilege."
[via Computeractive]
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