On e-mail hoaxes

[matgb]

Or, why Snopes.Com is your friend

I get 'virus warning' forwards, both at work and at home, a lot. Every single time I do, I do a very simple thing; I search snopes.com (there's a firefox plugin to do so) with the keyword of the forwarded warning.

In this case, I searched for invitation. Virtually everyone I know gets one warning on it; if you don't know snopes_dot_com exists, you don't know to search. Once you know, if you forward something, you are teh soopid. Why does it matter?

Online hoaxes scare people unneccesarily

They make the 'net a "nastier" place. There are genuine things to worry about online. So worrying about hoaxes is a displacement. A distraction. Worry about genuine threats, trojan horses, hijackers, keyboard recorders, etc.

On the blog, we get occasional attempts to install spam comments. Contacts using other services, such as Wordpress, can keep track of where they're coming from. 90% of spam comments on blogs, and 90% of other spam, comes from home PCs that have been hijacked and send spam without the user knowing. That is a genuine problem. Is your PC secure, your firewall working, your antivirus up to date, your spyware protection on?

Worry about that. Next time you get a virus warning email forward, assume it's a hoax, and search snopes, mcafee or symantec sources first.

It makes the world a better place. If it is a hoax? Reply all, and let everyone know, pass on this message.

I'll stop preaching now. And yes, this is inspired by an email just sent by a nameless innocent who thought she was doing good who will likely read this.

Comments

[daweaver.livejournal.com]

You do realise that Livejournal.com's business model is built on exploiting the "Virtual Flower For You" hoax?

[matgb]

Well, yes. I think I even said as such somewhere.

Still, just because businesses and make money because people are stupid, it doesn't stop us from telling them on occasions. Informed consumer choices are a good thing. Most consumers don't inform themselves.

[itchyfidget.livejournal.com]

It's funny you should make this post today. One of my first actions this morning was to reply to an email, forwarded in good faith by my Dad, giving details about a vaguely-plausible-but-unlikely telephone scam. I was therefore contemplating making a post very much like this, though more to vent than to inform, since most of my friends here are at least as net savvy as I am, if not more so.

Snopes is always my first stop when I get stuff like this (often from my stepmum, sometimes from Dad, every once or twice a semester from my work colleagues) and I always refer them back to snopes whenever they get anything that might be this kind of thing. Trouble is, they never think of it the next time something comes in. *sigh*

[matgb]

Yeah, my deputy doesn't ever check when she sends stuff on, neither do the friends that send stuff to her.

It gets to me, I send back to all of them, usually within a minute of receiving the mail.Still, if the message keeps getting reinforced, people may get it eventually.

The 'real life' forwards are the worst "be careful when taking flyers from your car window", etc. I don't think real stories actually do get forwarded, it's virtually always hoaxes.

[itchyfidget.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting last point!

[rho]

I tend to prefer that people don't reply to all about such things. I already know that these things are fake, and an email telling me as such is just as spammy to me as the original warning.

[matgb]

It depends I guess on who it's been sent to; sometimes I just hit reply to the original sender (who thinks it's real), but a lot of the time in the office it's people that would also believe it.

My deep cynicism about human nature kicks in I'm afraid; at work, assuming stupidity is the best option, number of times we've had to clear stuff off the network is silly.

[rho]

That's true. It depends on whether you know/are connected to the other recipients. If it's something like a work mailing list or something, then reply to all seems reasonable. If it's a friend sending to a whole heap of their friends, only a few of whom you know, then probably not.

[doccy.livejournal.com]

Ahh, I always love these, having met many hoaxes from Helpdesk work. My favourite ones are the 'invisible virus' emails - there's a file, it's a scary file, and your Virus Scan doesn't pick it up! Delete the file! The icon looks like a spider/teddy/whatever! Right now it's downloaded all your data, scanned your frontal lobe, and it's planning the perfect murder using your fingerprints! *gasp*

What? I swear, I've never, ever smiled as I explained "Uh, it controls the long filename function in Windows..." (well, apparently one of them does)

[matgb]

Yeah, first time I got sent one of them, I believed it, it was something that was linked to the Java runtime thing. The next time I asked the IT guy (this was back before I knew what I was doing), he introduced me to the wonders of looking things up.

The worst was the one a friend fell for, it was an essential part of the windows boot. Oops.

I don't get why people set them up, it's just nasty. Ah well.