How To Stop Email Hoaxes

by ComputerBob

January 2, 2000

Last Updated May 20, 2006

If you're anything like me, you're really tired of getting email messages that say things like these:

For every person that you forward this e-mail to, Microsoft will pay you $245.00, for every person that you sent it to that forwards it on, Microsoft will pay you $243.00 and for every third person that receives it, you will be paid $241.00. Within two weeks, Microsoft will contact you for your address and then send you a cheque...

An American woman had an Afghan boyfriend who suddenly disappeared, less than a week before the September 11 terrorist attacks against the United States. On September 10, she received a letter from him, in which he begged her to not get on any commercial airliners on September 11. He also warned her to stay away from shopping malls on Halloween. As soon as the terrorism started on September 11, she turned his letter over to the FBI...

There's a new virus that IBM and Microsoft just discovered yesterday that will TOTALLY DESTROY your Windows or Macintosh computer! America Online says that there is no known cure for this new virus! Hurry, send this email message to warn all of your friends and even your enemies...

Sign this petition or CBS will be forced to discontinue "Touched by an Angel" for using the word God in every program...

Quick, send this email on to as many people as you can RIGHT AWAY! Microsoft is tracking how many times people send this message, and they will pay you $1.00 for each time you do it...

Congress is about to pass Bill 602-P, which would impose a 5 cent surcharge on EVERY SINGLE EMAIL message you send! Write to your congressman right away, to tell them to vote "No" on Bill 602-P...

When the Neiman-Marcus employee said it would cost, "two-fifty," he thought they meant $2.50, but then they charged his Visa card $250.00 for the store's chocolate chip cookie recipe! To get revenge on them, he's giving the recipe away to everyone for free, so here it is! Be sure to pass this message on to all of your friends right away...

J.C. Penney's Department store recently sent the following email message to ALL of their employees, warning them about women being abducted at shopping malls! The TV show, Inside Edition, did a story about it, too! It's real! Abductors are offering to put women into TV commercials in order to lure them out of shopping malls, and then they're abducting the women and assaulting them! Send this message to ALL of your friends, to warn them about being abducted in shopping malls...

PLEASE pass this mail on to everybody you know. It is the request of a special little girl who will soon leave this world as she has cancer. Please send this to everyone you know or don't know. This little girl has 6 months left to live, and as her dying wish, She wanted to send a letter telling everyone to live their life to the fullest, since she never will. She'll never make it to prom, graduate from high school, or get married and have a family of her own. By you sending this to as many people as possible, you can give her and her family a little hope, because with every name that this is sent to, The American Cancer Society will donate 3 cents per name to her treatment and recovery plan...

Subject: An Amber Alert
Please look at the picture, read what her father says, then forward his message on...

Every single email message of that type that I have ever received has been a hoax, probably created by some sad, attention-craving misfit who wasn't smart enough to be able to create a computer virus. Every single hoax I've ever received was sent to me by a well-meaning friend, relative or student who sincerely thought that they were doing me a favor. In fact, well-meaning people have sent me different versions of the "new virus" hoax for the past 8 years, along with the cookie recipe hoax, 3 different versions of the petition hoax, the email surcharge hoax, the mall-abduction hoax, and many others. A few months ago, I received the Afghan boyfriend letter hoax, and tonight, I received the American Cancer Society hoax for about the tenth time in the past few years.

Email hoaxes are a problem because they invade our email inboxes without being invited, waste our time reading and forwarding them, exploit our fears, make us feel paranoid and unsafe, cause us to worry about things that aren't true, and make us more cynical about our fellow human beings. They also take up storage space on personal and corporate email servers, and make it take longer for us to download the other email messages that we want to read. On top of all that, they cause untold trouble for the people and organizations who they wrongly "quote" or tell untrue stories about, often for years and years. Worst of all, some recent hoax messages have been shown to contain computer viruses that will infect and destroy data on your computer and on the computers of everyone that you forward the message to.

If you really want to help people, stop forwarding email hoaxes to them.

Each time you receive a possible email hoax message, just remember this one simple rule:

ASSUME THAT IT IS A HOAX UNLESS YOU CAN PROVE THAT IT IS TRUE.

If you get an email message about a new PC virus, Don't send it to anyone. ASSUME THAT IT IS A HOAX UNLESS YOU CAN PROVE THAT IT IS TRUE. You can check whether or not it is a documented virus hoax (it nearly always is), by visiting the Symantec Antivirus Research Center's List of Virus Hoaxes.

If you get any other email message that you suspect may be a hoax, Don't send it to anyone. ASSUME THAT IT IS A HOAX UNLESS YOU CAN PROVE THAT IT IS TRUE. You can check to see whether or not it is a documented hoax (it nearly always is), by visiting Urban Legends -- it has the details of hundreds of email hoaxes. The award-winning ScamBusters site and monthly newsletter will also keep you informed of all the latest Internet scams and hoaxes, as well as tell you how to protect yourself from them.

Remember, every time you forward an email hoax to all of your friends and relatives, you're not showing them that you care, and you're not helping them -- you're annoying them and showing them that you don't care enough to check on whether messages are hoaxes before you forward them to others. You might be even forwarding a harmful computer virus on to everyone you know. And all of that makes you look really gullible, careless, and inconsiderate. So don't do it. UPDATE, May 20, 2006: If you need more convincing, read 5 Rules of Forwarding E-mails.

Finally, from now on, each time you receive an email hoax from someone, please take a minute to write back and educate them about email hoaxes, so that they'll stop forwarding them to others. If you don't know how to explain the problem to them, feel free to send them an email message with the address to this page, which is http://www.computerbob.com/guides/email_hoaxes.html.

In fact, I heard that Microsoft is tracking how many times people email this article to others, and they will pay you $1.00 for each time you do it.

And if you believe that, you'd better re-read this article.