Created as a spoof of the recent sulfnbk.exe hoax, a joke warning people of a virus named AOL.exe has some deleting the Internet program from their computers.

After posting a farcical virus advisory on his Joke-A-Day site warning people to delete the “insidious” AOL.exe virus, Webmaster Ray Owens found that quite a few of his readers actually believed it. Worse, they forwarded it to their friends. Owens received more than 700 letters, some congratulating him on the joke, but quite a few others asking him if the “warning” was real. He even got a handful from people who had taken the warning seriously and deleted America Online from their system. “The smart people had a good laugh, and the dumb people were scared as all get out,” he said. The joke advisory mimicked a sham that spread through e-mail last week. The hoax told people that a benign Windows file—sulfnbk.exe, used to allow long filenames under DOS—was actually a virus. Many people believed the message and deleted the file.