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-How To Spot An Email
Hoax-
Intro:
Within any given day, thousands of emails are circulated around
the world claiming to have vital information or important news -or
even some spiritual platitude to spread. Unfortunately most of these
messages are simply a hoax of one kind or another but there are ways
of spotting these guys if you know a what to look for. Below are
some simple ways I've gleaned over the years that I hope will help.
To start off, I'd first suggest adding a couple
websites to your collection:
Google.com
By far the best Internet search engine I've used as of late.
Normally the first thing I do with a suspicious email is throw in a
few key words from the email into this search engine and add the
word "hoax" and see if I find a match. I like to use any name that's
mentioned in the email as my best bet for a search.
Snopes.com - Urban Legends
Reference Pages
Probably one of the best databases of email hoaxes I've ever
used. I can normally find out if an email is a hoax here faster than
anywhere else. The amount of research these guys do is amazing!
Now here's a few tell-tale signs to look for in
your emails:
"Send this to all your friends..."
To begin with, the moment you see this in the message, you
can be 99% sure it's a hoax. The entire point of an email hoax is to
get it to spread all over the world. There is a danger with this
characteristic though, most people simply forward the message from
their email client without cleaning out the text of all the other
email addresses that lay inside. What happens over time is the
message gradually increases in size as the list of email addresses
grows. Many marketing groups will use these addresses to send you
unsolicited advertisements.
NOTE: If you are planning on forwarding an email
that contains previous email addresses and/or needs to be cleaned
up, I'm working on another page that will explain how to do this and
safely distribute you message to many addresses without revealing
your address list.
"There's an email virus warning out
there..."
Another common email hoax. These have been around almost as
long as there has been email! You can almost immediately dismiss
these messages but there are simple ways of checking of they are
true. Claims about viruses that don't include a link to a credible
or trustworthy website (like Norton.com)
would be a big clue that the message is a hoax. If the best virus
detectors in the planet don't know about the virus, chances are it
doesn't exist!
"Blessings from Heaven..."
Sadly the next most common email hoax has a Christian twist to it. These messages usually have ASCII
(or "text-based") art that shows angels and the like. They will talk of not being ashamed of what you believe in and make you feel guilty for not sending it on. Some even talk of blessings people have received when
forwarding the message and curses that people have had that didn't pass it on.
As a devout Christian myself, these messages make me the most upset
as it puts Christianity in a bit of a bad light to those who don't
understand what Christianity is all about. I hardly think that Jesus
would be using email if he had it available 2000 years ago to spread
His message. In reality, most of the people that create these
message aren't even Christians at all. Their interest isn't to
spread the the Word of God as much as to simply see how far they can
get their email to go.
"The government wants to start taxing
your email..."
Another hoax running around regards some pending legislation that will end life as we know it today. The message will have official-sounding information and names mentioned (all fake). If there isn't a link to an official government website (that is, one ending in .gov) then it is surely a hoax.
Final Notes:
This is by no means a complete list of email hoaxes. There are
many variations on the theme that exist. But using these simple principles
you should be able to protect yourself from any others that pop up
in the future. Understand that just because a friend sent you the
message doesn't mean it's true. Always check out the sources before
forwarding anything that may be false.
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