Hoax
Contents
Different Types of Hoaxes and Proper
Responses
A hoax is an attempt
to trick an audience that something that is false is true.
A hoax is often perpetrated as a practical joke. The type
of hoaxes that this article will be talking about is in
the form of email hoaxes (chain letters, virus
hoaxes, false alarms, etc.).
- Chain Letters:
- Chain letters (in terms of electronic mail or email)
is a term used to describe emails that encourage you
to forward them on to someone else.
- Chain letters when in widespread circulation are
often difficult to control and may increase the users'
risk of receiving computer
viruses, and may also increase the amount of spam
received, since participant's email addresses are
sometimes visible and may end up in the hands of spammers,
virus writers, or other malicious
hackers, either directly or via mailing lists
archives on the web.
- Chain letters may also consume enormous amounts
of bandwidth when widespread.
- Proper Response for Chain Letters: The
proper response for chain letters is to simply
ignore them. No matter how sad, funny or true
the chain letter seems to be, its best to just
simply ignore them and do not forward. Forwarding
chain letters simply consumes bandwidth, and space
on a server. Most chain letters are false, and
are usually scams, or a practical joke.
- False Alarms:
- False alarms (in terms of computer security) is
an incorrect report that a file is a virus.
- Proper Response for False Alarms: It
is often very difficult to tell if a virus report
is a false alarm without having specialist knowledge
in computer security. If you think you have stumbled
onto an incorrect virus report, contact that author,
or company and ask for an update.
- Misunderstandings:
- A misunderstanding (in terms of computer security)
is a problem which is often erroneously attributed
to computer viruses. This usually happens when a computer
problem occurs, and the first thing users blame it
on is a computer virus, but in fact there are hundreds
if not thousands of other possibilities that can occur.
- Proper Response for Misunderstandings:
It is common to automatically accuse
computer viruses, for problems happening within
your computer. The best way is to do a simple
internet search on the problem on a search engine
such as Google, Yahoo!, or MSN.
- Virus Hoaxes:
- A warning about a nonexistent virus. It usually
urges people to forward the message to everyone they
know. Virus hoaxes are a form of chain letters. See
Chain Letters for more
details.
- Proper Response for Virus Hoaxes:
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