Life is beautiful virus hoax

The Life is beautiful virus hoax is an e-mail hoax which began circulating on the Internet around January 2002 in Brazil. The e-mail details a virus contained in a Microsoft PowerPoint attachment which is supposedly called Life is beautiful.pps. To date, no such virus has been found and the e-mail is widely considered a hoax.

The e-mail claims to be based upon information from Microsoft and Norton. Symantec, the makers of Norton AntiVirus and who actually provides the virus definitions database for Norton AntiVirus, have issued an advisory stating that the e-mail is a hoax.^[1]

Although the hoax began circulating in 2002 it became active once again in late 2009 and intermittently through email and Facebook since. In some instances the text of the hoax e-mail reports that the virus was made by a person, codename "life owner," who is suing Microsoft in court for patent infringement.

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