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It’s a long time since I wanted to write a "general guidelines e-mail" about e-mail hoaxes. Some of my not-so-tech-savvy friends forward many a suspicious e-mail to me to see if that's a hoax. I have been seeing such e-mails for sometime now, and now I am in a position to say if a particular mail is a hoax or not in less than 10 seconds. This is no magic and anyone can do it. Why prevent e-mail chains, especially hoaxes? E-mail chains take a lot of bandwidth in the network and it is no secret that companies all over the world suffer hugely because of constraints in network bandwidth. I can't stress more on the wastage of time and energy in creating, reading, forwarding, and then taking corrective and preventive measures from spreading such malicious mails. What are the most common subjects for e-mail chains/hoaxes? Here's my top 4 list: 1. Virus hoaxes 2. E-mail hoaxes connected with making money 3. E-mail hoaxes connected with wishing good luck and great fortune 4. E-mail hoaxes stating that someone is sick and he/she needs your help Virus hoaxes: Someone (mostly one of your friends) sends you a mail stating that there is a deadly virus out there on the "Internet" that has no cure. They most often go on to state that Microsoft, AOL, Intel, and ... <add the company names that you are familiar with here!> are investigating this issue and none of them have a clue about it. E-mail hoaxes connected with making money: In this case the forwarded mail will state something like: "Company X (replace X with a US reputed company, Microsoft, AOL, Intel, ... <your favorite company name here>) will pay you $Y (Usually $5, $10 etc.), if you forward this mail to n (replace n with 5, 10, or 20) people you know. Some may offer a pyramidal structured payment scheme also. E-mail hoaxes connected with wishing good luck and great fortune: Here, the forwarded mail will say that you will have good luck and good fortune if you forward the mail to your friends. The mail may state the number of friends you need to forward it or it will generally say "forward to all your friends". A variation of this mail is the "friendly mails", that will ask you to forward it to "everyone of your friends" including the original "friend" that forwarded the mail to you. E-mail hoaxes stating that someone is sick and he/she needs your help: This e-mail will tell you that person X is sick and he/she is in need of your help. They will ask you to forward this mail to as many people as possible. You may be given an e-mail address to contact the person or a postal address where they are setting up a fund to help the person. This is the trickiest of all to verify the authenticity of the mail. Others: There are hundreds of variants out there that may look like real. Free giveaway is one of the favorite e-mail hoaxes. Keep in mind that nothing comes in as free. So, how do you know if a mail is a hoax? We are on to the vital question. How do you distinguish between a hoax and a "non hoax" mail? Well, there is no hard and fast rule to identify this. There are some definite pointers where you can smell something fishy with the mail. I am listing out some of my test points. · A hoax mail will always be forwarded to you by one of your friends, and the original author's name or e-mail will not be there in the mail. · Most of the hoax mails will have this sentence in one form or the other: "Forward it to everyone you know". · Look out for sentences like: "This is not a hoax", "This may look like a hoax", and "I did not believe it at first." · Frequent use of UPPERCASE LETTERS and or multiple exclamation marks (!!!!!!) as a form of convincing the reader. · The mail will not be just informational. It will ask you to take some action. (No hoax mail will say that "Hey this is just for your information, read it and delete it".) · No sources will be listed (like e-mail addresses or valid URLs where you can check to see if this is correct). · Hoaxes sometimes contain sentences that are contradictory. What should you do if you get a hoax mail? Believe me, any chain mail sent to you will be more likely to be false than true. Look at the mail with a critical eye. Make it a point not forward any such mails. Discourage your friends who are forwarding hoax mails to you. When you get a hoax mail, if you can't find out its authenticity, do not forward. If the author of the mail is trying to send you some "unbelievable" information, suspect its contents, and try to find out whether or not the information in the mail is true before forwarding to your friends. Look for evidences in the mail for the author's claims. If any of your favorite company names are listed in the mail, go to their site and check to see if information about this particular e-mail is there. About Virus hoaxes: Generally, if you just open a mail that contains a virus attachment, it does not affect your system. Look at the word "generally" in the beginning of the sentence. It is when you "execute" the attachment; the virus infects your system. The attachment need not be .EXE files to be "executed". It can be of any extensions like .COM, .VBS, .JS, .JSE, .BAT, .WSH, .WSC, .CMD, .VBE, .WSF, .SCT, .SHS, .HTA, or any of the MS Office product files which can execute a Macro (like .DOC, .XLS, .XLA, .PPT, etc.). It is safer to delete the e-mail with attachment if you get such an email from a stranger. Look at http://www.microsoft.com/PressPass/press/2000/May00/SecurityUpdatePR.asp if you are using Microsoft Outlook as your e-mail client. Common resources to check for E-mail hoaxes (You will leave my homepage by clicking any of these links): http://www.datafellows.com/virus-info/hoax http://www.umich.edu/~virus-busters http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACWelcome.html http://www.sophos.com http://urbanlegends.about.com/science/urbanlegends/library/blhoax.htm http://www.microsoft.com/PressPass/hoax/hoax.asp Or any anti-virus company website, for that matter. If you have any questions or concerns related to this mail, please ask me, and I will be happy to take it off-line with you. (Written on September 1, 2000)
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