Hoax mobile ICE warning
p2pnet.net News:- Mobile users are being urged to add a new entry to their phones – ICE (In Case of Emergency).
“The idea is that if you’re hurt, rescuers can easily figure out who they should contact by calling the ‘ICE’ number from your phone (assuming they can access it),” says F-Secure’s Mikko Hypponen.
But, “brain-dead pranksters have started a chain-letter email warning against such practice, because a mobile phone virus might exploit it,” he says.
“This is nonsense. No viruses to exploit the ‘ICE’ number exist or are likely to exist. There are viruses already that go through the full phone book and attack every number.”
Hypponen gives an example of a typical hoax message, namely:
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.
File under Garbage and don’t pass it along.
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See:-
F-Secure – Hoax about “ICE” phone entries, July 19, 2005
August 6th, 2005 at 10:08 pm
Not a hoax.
Genuine attempt by UK emergency services following London bombs.
Proposed by a Suffolk County Ambulance man reading about mobiles ringing in the chaos to provide a single location in a phone book for the services to locate a next of kin. Adopted by that service as a useful tool.
Was published on UK National television services.