I came across the following articale and thought it may be of interest to international travelers. I can't personally validate it's authinticity, but it is interesting and seems possible:

"This Incident has been confirmed by Snopes. In Katy , TX
As a woman was putting gas in her car, a man came over and offered his services as a painter, and had his business card in his hand. She said no, but accepted his card out of kindness and got in the car. The man then got into a car driven by another gentleman. As the lady left the service station, she saw the men following her out of the station at the same time. Almost immediately, she started to feel dizzy and could not catch her breath. She tried to open the window and realized that the odor was on her hand; the same hand which accepted the card from the gentleman at the gas station.

She then noticed the men were immediately behind her and she felt she needed to do something at that moment. She drove into the first driveway and began to honk her horn repeatedly to ask for help.. The men drove away but the lady still felt pretty bad for severalminutes after she could finally catch her breath. Apparently, there was a substance on the card that could have seriously injured her.

This drug is called 'BURUNDANGA ' and it is used by people who wish to incapacitate a victim in order to steal from or take advantage of them.

This drug is four times dangerous than the date rape drug and is transferable on simple cards.
So take heed and make sure you don ' t accept business cards at any given time alone or from someone on the streets. This applies to those making house calls and slipping you a card when they offer their services."

Sounds like horse shit.

snopes.com: Burundanga Business Card

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Thanks Mike, after checking the link you posted It's obvious your right!

I have yet to see anything which begins ¨Confirmed by Snopes.com¨ which has, in fact, been confirmed by Snopes. It´s a sure sign that nonsense will follow immediately.

The real puzzle is why would anyone expose themselves to humiliation by posting something without taking less than a minute to check it out themselves on Snopes? It´s ridiculously easy to do.

Mark

Just the name Burundanga was a dead giveaway.
Someone take this shit thread out of here, pronto!
yeah, the world is a very dangerous place full of people out there waiting to get YOU!!!
These kind of stupid posts go completely against the spirit of sites like these.
My two bob of opinion...

snopes is a website dedicated to urban legends

Wow, no mercy on this site. I formally apologize for my lack of judgement, failure to adaquately research the subject, and inconvienance I may have cause related to this post. However, I have now researched this and found the drug is actually "Scopolamine" and has indeed been tied to Columbia criminals. It is used by putting the drug into a drink or food, and true enough, it cannot be administered in large enough quanities through a "Business Card."

Additionally, I don't think anybody would diagree that there is a potential for drug induced robbery in South America, just as here in the US. Better safe that sorry and I would still recommend using caution and good sense.

Let's Ride for the Cure - Home

It's ALWAYS worth checking out the veracity of this sort of stuff. Indeed, as noted, "confirmed by Snopes" is almost a guarantee that it's crap.

Here's an old bit I wrote about this stuff - relates to an old virus hoax, but the concepts hold true.

Maybe it's a case of digital attention-deficit disorder: Every so often, an old hoax resurfaces and snares a fresh crop of people who either missed, or simply don't remember, the last iteration.
The "S u l f n b k" hoax is one such. It's spread by well-meaning people, taken in by the hoax, who send out a form email that starts something like:

Hi everybody, sorry about this. I got a virus from someone and as you are all in my address book, I presume you now have it too. The virus is apparently undetectable by Norton and McAfee. It remains dormant for 14 days then activates and wipes out the hard drive data.

The file in question, "s u l f n b k .e x e," isn't detected by anti-virus tools because it's not a virus: It's a normal part of DOS-based versions of Windows--- a tool for backing up long file names. People who fall for the hoax actually end up deleting part of their operating system!
If you get the hoax mail, don't delete the file. (More info: LangaList Std Edition 2001-05-31 )
If you already did delete the file, here's how to restore it:
LangaList Std Edition 2001-06-04
A good rule of thumb is NEVER to believe or forward any email just because it says "Urgent: Pass this on to everyone!" or comes from a buddy (even a well-intentioned one). Chain letters are almost always (99.99999% of the time) a hoax or scam designed solely to trick the gullible into perpetrating the hoax.
You can make yourself chain-letter-proof by taking literally about a minute to check up on any claims made in chain letters you receive:

• Symantec Anti Virus Research Center at http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/index.html
• McAfee Associates Virus Hoax List at McAfee.com - Virus Hoaxes
• Online and email hoaxes http://www.kumite.com/myths/
• The Urban Legends Web Site at http://www.urbanlegends.com
• Urban Legends Reference Pages at http://www.snopes.com
• Datafellows Hoax Warnings at http://www.Europe.Datafellows.com/news/hoax.htm

ALWAYS take a few seconds to verify the truth of any email like the one above, and then tell your friends only if it proves true. Otherwise, you're just helping the hoaxers to waste people's time and bandwidth--- or, in this case, actually to delete part of their operating systems!
Additional resources to hone your BS detectors:

• How To Evaluate Internet Research Sources at http://www.virtualsalt.com/evalu8it.htm
• How To Evaluate Information Sources at http://www.vuw.ac.nz/~agsmith/evaln/evaln.htm

As standard AV protection for yourself, I strongly recommend as a standard procedure the following:
1. Turn OFF (uncheck) "Hide file extensions for known file types" (normaly checked) in Windows Explorers Tools / Folder Options / View. This will enable you to see what the real file extension is. .JPG, .GIF and .TXT are safe to open, but almost anything else could contain a virus of some sort. VERY dangerous extensions are .pif, .vbs, .exe, .com, .xls and .doc, and there are others.
2. Get an up-to-date virus scanner and update it daily - I use Avira AV and use the automatic update feature which checks frequently for virus updates and can be set to scan all incoming email. Once upon a time in the good old days once a month was enough - but not any more. My virus updater has automatically downloaded new updates twice in one day more than once.
3. Never run an attachment of any kind unless you are expecting the file from someone you know, and even then, scan it with antivirus software. A friend could easily be infected with a worm that will send an email with the virus to everyone in their address book - so you will know who it is from!

__________________
Grant Johnson
Seek, and ye shall find.
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Inspiring, Informing and Connecting travellers since 1997!
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