It Takes Guts to say Jesus Virus-Fiction!

It Takes Guts to say Jesus Virus-Fiction!

Summary of the eRumor
A virus warning about a virus named "It Takes Guts to Say Jesus."
It says the virus is very dangerous, much worse than the infamous Melissa virus, and that it uses the Norton Utilities "reformat" function to reformat your hard drive and make you lose everything.
It also claims that it destroys both IBM and "Macintosh" computers.

The Truth
This warning is a hoax that has been circulating on the Internet since the late 1990's.
Variations of it also warn against opening any email that has a subject line of "RETURNED OR UNABLE TO DELIVER."

The phrase "It takes guts to say Jesus" hearkens back to the Columbine High School shootings in Littleton, Colorado in 1999.
A story circulated shortly afterwards that one of the of the students who was shot, 16-year old Cassie Bernall, was challenged by the student who shot her with the question of whether she believed in God.
She is said to have responded by saying "Yes, I believe in Jesus" or simply "yes," but there has been controversy over whether it was she or another student who said those words.
Cassie became well known as a result and many Christian luminaries participated in her funeral service.
Out of that came the phrase, "It takes guts to say Jesus."

A real example of the eRumor as it has appeared on the Internet:

If you receive an email titled: "It Takes Guts to Say Jesus"
DO NOT OPEN IT. It will erase everything on your hard drive.
This information was announced yesterday morning from IBM; AOL states that this is a very dangerous virus, much worse than
"Melissa," and that there is NO Remedy for it at this time.
Some very sick individual has succeeded in using the reformat function from Norton Utilities causing it to completely erase all documents on the hard drive.
It has been designed to work with Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer.
It destroys Macintosh and IBM co mpatible computers.

This is a new, very malicious virus and not many people know about it. Pass this warning along to EVERYONE in your address book ! and please share it with all your online friends ASAP so that this threat maybe stopped.

Please practice cautionary measures and tell anyone that may have access to your computer. Forward this warning to everyone that you know that might access the Internet.