text: The Postcard Virus? - BreakTheChain.org
  The Postman Rings Twice, But E-mails Forever
  When computer viruses first infiltrated e-mail servers, virus creators had to employ a type of social engineering to encourage their potential victims to unleash their malicious payload. They crafted attachments with interesting file names and christened the e-mails carrying them with irresitible subject lines, knowing that the average person's curiosity was all it often took to kill the CPU. That was a long time ago. Viruses and their distribution methods have become far more sophisticated, making them harder to tell from the average mail. Today, the notion that you can protect yourself from a virus infestation simply by knowing which e-mails to avoid is just plain ludicrous, but that doesn't stop hoaxes like this one from continuing to circulate and evolve.
  Some of my more ardent readers may correctly think that this one looks familiar. It should. Save for a couple of minor edits, it is nearly identical to the olympic torch virus warning circulating since early 2006. That one has spawned several "children," - including the December 2006 Merry Christmas warning - but was itself an offspring of the much older A Card For You and WTC Survivor hoaxes.
  Virus warnings play on common societal fears that something we do, such as unknowingly opening an infected file, will cause us a great deal of heartache and embarrassment, since our infection will undoubtedly spread to others and, thus, they will know we were foolish enough to fall for the hook. Yet, in the 'real world,' relying on e-mailed virus warnings to ensure the safety of your computer and the data it contains is foolhardy at best and suicidal - technologically speaking - at worst.