» Features

- Join Here
- Terms & Conditions
- What is Writers Club?

Who knows why people develop Internet hoaxes. Maybe they need a kick, might be they’re getting in touch with their inner sociopath, or maybe they just had a neglected childhood. The possibilities are endless. Only the original writer will know the true reason.

Some of the possibilities, however, could be to see how far a letter will go, to harass another person (include an e-mail address and ask everyone to send mail, e.g. Jessica Mydek). Or to milk money out of people using a pyramid scheme, or perhaps to make money by sending their stocks up, as in the case of the Bloomberg scenario.

Other reasons could be to kill some other chain letter (e.g. Make Money Fast) or to damage a person's or organisation's reputation as in the case of Bill Gates, or the AOL/Netscape Merger hoax.

Hoax messages try to get you to pass them on to everyone you know using several different methods of social engineering. Most hoaxes play on your need to help people. They rely on our sympathetic response and desire to protect those you love.

I mean, how could you not want to help this poor little girl who is about to die from cancer? And, of course, you have to warn your family that some sicko could ask you to smell a new designer perfume and rob you blind, or worse…

Fear is another emotion cyber scammers are fond of tapping into. Be careful not to flash your lights at another car without its lights on. You could be the next victim of a horrific gang initiation ritual.

The people most at risk from these unscrupulous attention seekers are the novice Internet users and the everyday man on the street who wants to buy online, or invest online, and is totally unaware of the scams and hoaxes around the virtual corner.

There are some excellent websites out there in cyberspace dedicated to spurning the efforts of these scam-mongers. iafrica.com has a section of this site called Scamwatch, which is updated constantly with all the latest Internet scams. I also found a worthwhile list of all known email hoaxes on About, The Human Internet. Any search on a common search engine will give you a long list of similar sites.

It is hard to see through these messages when you first get them, but the clues are easy to spot, if you know how…

Consider the case of PairGrain Technologies. In the space of one morning, on the strength of a single Web page that looked uncannily like Bloomberg News, shares in PairGain Technologies of Tustin, Calif., were bid up by almost a third. They quickly fell back to earth when the hoax was exposed - Bloomberg had put out no such report.

A similar hoax came in the form of the Gap Giveaway message supposedly written by the company's founder. This email promises you a gift certificate or Gap products via a mysterious pop up screen, for forwarding it to your friends.

Here’s an excerpt from the message: “I am offering thirty five dollar gift certificates to every seven people you send it to. When you have finished sending this letter to as many people as you wish, a screen will come up. It will tell you how much you have earned in Gap gift certificates. Print that screen out and bring it to your local Gap store. The sales clerk will give you your certificates and you can SHOP BABY!”

And just in case you were having doubts, the originators even added two more paragraphs to the message.

"Hey guys, I finally found one that is TRUE! I went down to the gap myself and redeemed my GIFT CERTIFICATES already!!! I sent enough e-mails to get over two hundred dollars worth of clothes from the GAP! You know, with all the crap sent over the mail, it is good to know that something finally rings true in this environment of virtual deception. Send it to everyone you know, and you too can have a whole new wardrobe, courtesy of THE GAP! Isn't it grand? One more detail, my "screen" only came up after I had sent out nineteen different messages. It must have something to do with how the strange program works... What will they think of next..."

Exactly. What will they think of next? Despite this rather, umm, convincing testimonial, you can be sure that you won’t see a pop-up screen with this message whether you send 1 or 649 copies. It’s just not technologically possible.

So how do we know whether a message is a con?

Firstly, if you don’t know the person who sent it to you, be sceptical. If the person who sent it to you, forwarded it on from some other unknown source, be VERY sceptical.

Look out for the telltale signs, like “send this to everyone you know” or something to that effect. No credibly company or institution is going to ask you to send this message out to everyone you know.

What makes a successful hoax? Well there are two main factors. Some well-known association accredits it, and it uses technical jargon, or technical sounding language.

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...".

At first this might sound daunting, but with a little investigation it was found that there is no such thing as a nth-complexity infinite binary loop, and processors are designed to run loops for weeks at a time without damage.

With Internet site hoaxes, as in the above Bloomberg example, the easiest way to check whether it’s real or not is to go to the address. For example, its Internet address was not Bloomberg's site, www.bloomberg.com, but www.angelfire.com - a service owned by Internet portal Lycos where users can set up Web pages for free.

Another way of finding out whether a page is counterfeit is to go to a domain registration site like www.internic.net to see who owns the address.

Most anti-virus companies have a Web page containing information about most known viruses and hoaxes.

Bogus Web pages are created to look very similar to legitimate sites. Users are directed from a well-known site, such as Yahoo, to the fake page.

The bogus site has an address very similar to the one it’s trying to pass itself off as, and if you’re suspicious or just curious about a site you can go to www.internic.net and type in the site's address where it says "Get a Web address or search our database for availability." If the address is in use, it will show who has registered it and the address; other information, such as the phone number may also appear.

Apart from that, be vigilant and trust nobody. An easy mantra to remember is: “When in doubt, don’t send it out!”