Some of you in the past couple of hours may have received the following email (maybe several times).

Subject: FW: Martial Arts Forum Viruses And Security Issues
Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2006 14:57:05 -0500
From: crowther@wanadoo.fr
To: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


If you participate in on-line forums such as martialtalk.com and e-budo.com, the security of your computer and personal data may have been seriously
compromised.

Like most of these types of forums, they use cookies to track your movement and record you Internet Protocol (IP) Address to identify your computer.
This information gets recorded in thier data base along with your user name. So they know who you are, where you are and where you go on the internet.
They will run scripts that can gather other personal information off of your computer. If you use things like Quicken and Microsoft Money, they know what bank you use, what credit cards you use and other vital personal data.

This information then can be sold to marketing companies and spammers and can also be used for identity theft.

This is also now a popular way to spread viruses. If you use the Private Message feature to read notes from someone, you may very well find that your computer has unwanted and perhaps even harmful programming installed.

If you are concerned about the integrity of your personal information and the security of your computer, you should stay away from these types of forums.
Anyway, although BudoSeek was not mentioned in the above email, I still feel compelled to respond to this nonsense since we use the same forum software as E-Budo and MartialTalk.

First, this email shows how amazingly stupid some people are about computers, cookies, etc. It also shows how some folks are skilled at starting a rumor and getting it to stick by no others means than simply repeating it often. We all have seen the emails of the "super viruses" that are supposedly reported on CNN and confirmed by Microsoft" that will delete all of the data on your computer, steal your identity and make you sterile. These "virus hoaxes" are well known, yet they continue to spread because they sound a little credible and keep getting passed along by those that do not take the time to learn they are hoaxes and spread to others who are gullible. This is certainly the case with this particular email.

Second, "cookies" are not some evil magical thing that many have taken them to be. They are not worms, viruses, trojan horse, or any malicious software, but a simple text file that can be read and written to by ONLY the domain (like budoseek.net or ebudo.com) that created them. It cannot read your MS Money or Quicken software or anything else on your computer. A cookie is used by our forum software to allow your preferences to be saved (that you set in your User CP) and let you login automatically. Oh, and if you are using Yahoo, Hotmail, or ANY web based email service, you are using cookies. As far as recording your IP address when you visit or create a post/thread, that is true, but it does not require the use of a cookie to do so. The IP address is logged for no other reason than to prevent others that may be malicious (like spammers) from posting on our site, or to identify those that may have duplicate accounts. If can also be used to help police track back a fraudulent CC purchase on e-commerce websites.

Third, there is no script that can be run that will allow me or any other person that runs this forum software to implant malicious software on your computer, whether it is from general forum usage or private messages.

Anyway, the above email was undoubtedly sent out by someone that was "out'ed" by one of the named forums as being a phoney or flake. If you are still uncertain as to whether you should believe this nonsense, then go over to the vBulletin website and read all of the posts describing the "evil" that can be perpetrated by this software. I think you will quickly see that the allegations in this email are completely bogus.