E-mail Hoaxes

[gini]

I, personally want everyone to understand clearly what Phred was trying to convey in his email regarding the hoax.

The original request by the young boy who lost his father on 9/11 may have been pure and true.

However, other people have picked up this request and they are the ones who may not have the best of intentions.

Phred said that at least four email addresses were imbedded in this email, requesting we sign it and forward it to our friends.

What that means is that all of our addresses went to these people and just start multiplying folks...........if all of us send it to our friends and they send it to their.............etc.

Then they have gleaned from us innocent folks a huge email list that then can be used for all kinds of junk mail. I want to open my inbox and not have it crammed with junk mail and I am sure all of us want the same thing.

www.truthorfiction.com is just one of the many sites you can use to check this stuff out.

I have innocently done exactly what Jackie did - thought it was such a good idea and wanted all of my friends to know about it.

Jackie, I cannot tell you how sorry I am that this happened to you, but you need to know that you aren't the first one, because I have been just as guilty.

But I learned something from Phred that I didn't know before.

[sammi]

Go to the above web site (truth/fiction) click on search and type in nat. firefighters day.
The e-mails of stories,jokes ect. is usually okay its that everybody's name gets passed on and on (if you check under properties and hit message source everybody's name and e-mail add. is listed that it was sent to.)

[Tubby & Peanut's Mom]

Gini, what you say is so true. I really have no way of knowing, but IMHO, even the first post was a hoax. There are way too many unscrupulous (sp?) people who take advantage of people like poor Jackie and the rest of us who aren't that computer literate. Some of these messages go around for years (like the one about the boy dying of cancer who wants to amass business cards to be in the Guiness book of World Records) and years. There is *really* no way to know if it is a hoax or not, but checking the websites mentioned in the posts following Jackie's would be a good start.

The bad part is that these emails usually do come from someone you know well and trust. Like Jackie, they cared and wanted to do something, so they took the emails advice and passed it along because of their big hearts.

I have set a rule for myself that sometimes is hard to stick to. If the email specifically mentions passing it on to all my friends, I immediately delete it. If "they" want you to pass it along, it's a good bet that "they" have an unscrupulous reason for doing so. Of course this doesn't mean that they are all bad, but sometimes it's better to be safe than sorry.

It's really sad that the internet has come to this, and that there are people out there who only want to hurt others, but that is the reality of it all. :(

I don't mean to offend anyone by this, this is just one of my pet peeves about the internet, and I know a lot of people who don't know a lot about computers and the internet get duped by these sad stories.

[wolflady]

Yes, unfortunately so many of these are floating around, and a lot of them do sound as if they could be true. The big RED flag for most email hoaxes is that it is asking you to send to 10 or whatever number of people.

When in doubt...assume it is a hoax! Here are some really good sites I use to check just to be sure...
http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html (given to me by our IT guy...they have to keep on top of this stuff in the computer industry...good credible site)
http://www.nonprofit.net/hoax/default.htm
http://www.vmyths.com/
http://urbanlegends.miningco.com/library/blhoax.htm
http://www.europe.f-secure.com/news/hoax/
http://www.urbanlegends.com/

http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org/ (this is a good informative site on how to recognize hoaxes, warnings, and chain letters, what to do about them, and even a history of them, along with lists of hoaxes in different categories!)

I thought I would go ahead and post this "how to recognize a hoax" here for quick reference. More info can be found on the above sites.

How to Recognize a Hoax
Probably the first thing you should notice about a warning is the request to "send this to everyone you know" or some variant of that statement. This should raise a red flag that the warning is probably a hoax. No real warning message from a credible source will tell you to send this to everyone you know.

Next, look at what makes a successful hoax. There are two known factors that make a successful hoax, they are:

(1) technical sounding language.
(2) credibility by association.
If the warning uses the proper technical jargon, most individuals, including technologically savvy individuals, tend to believe the warning is real. For example, the Good Times hoax says that "...if the program is not stopped, the computer's processor will be placed in an nth-complexity infinite binary loop which can severely damage the processor...". The first time you read this, it sounds like it might be something real. With a little research, you find that there is no such thing as an nth-complexity infinite binary loop and that processors are designed to run loops for weeks at a time without damage.

When we say credibility by association we are referring to who sent the warning. If the janitor at a large technological organization sends a warning to someone outside of that organization, people on the outside tend to believe the warning because the company should know about those things. Even though the person sending the warning may not have a clue what he is talking about, the prestige of the company backs the warning, making it appear real. If a manager at the company sends the warning, the message is doubly backed by the company's and the manager's reputations.

Both of these items make it very difficult to claim a warning is a hoax so you must do your homework to see if the claims are real and if the person sending out the warning is a real person and is someone who would know what they are talking about. You do need to be a little careful verifying the person as the apparent author may be a real person who has nothing to do with the hoax. If thousands of people start sending them mail asking if the message is real, that essentially constitutes an unintentional denial of service attack on that person. Check the person's web site or the person's company web site to see if the hoax has been responded to there. Check these pages or the pages of other hoax sites to see if we have already declared the warning a hoax.

Hoax messages also follow the same pattern as a chain letter

Hope this helps and let's work to STAMP out hoaxes!!!