Brain Candy #9 - A Packet of Lies: Falsehoods on the Internet

It seems like e-mail was tailor-made for scams and hoaxes. The most common are chain letters, requesting that you send money to the person at the top of the chain. When your turn comes, so the message claims, you'll have a windfall. This is a pyramid scheme; it rarely works, never for long, and is definitely illegal. Just throw them away.

Another scam required that you download 'special' software to access pornography. When the victim ran the software, it called a special number in Eastern Europe at an exorbitant charge per minute. By the time the victim caught on and disconnected, the bill could be huge. Legally, the victim was responsible for the fee, even under the circumstances.

Hoaxes are also common. One of the most frequent are the e-mail virus hoaxes. There is no known way to get a computer virus from the text of an e-mail message. The hoax occurs when a message arrives at your mailbox that says to throw away any e-mail that has a certain subject, like "Good Times". One of the nastiest variations on this that I've seen tells you to throw away without opening any e-mail you receive with a subject of "Returned or Unable to Deliver". This is the subject line that an Internet server sends when you have undeliverable mail. If you just throw it away based on the hoax, you won't know that one of your e-mail messages, perhaps a critical one, has not been received.

NOTE: There is a way that e-mail can transmit viruses. Messages themselves are always safe, but if you ever receive a binary file -- a program -- by e-mail from an untrusted or unknown sender, it's best to just throw it away. As long as you don't run it, it can't hurt you, but once you've run it, you're at its mercy. (Addition to the original article; see the end of this one!)

Another common hoax involves sending business cards or similar items to a dying boy or girl. The story is that a dying child wants to get into the Guinness Book of World Records by collecting the most business cards (or post cards or several similar things) from well-wishers before he/she dies. Actually, this started out as a true story, but the boy (who survived) has long ago stopped collecting and he, his family and his post office are now being horribly inconvenienced by the undying e-mail campaign. Well-meaning companies are constantly circulating and re-circulating these. I've seen it go through my company several times in the last few years.

A similar hoax involves e-mail that urges recipients to collect worthless proof-of-purchase stickers for charitible organizations. The targeted company has an undeserved public relations problem when they have to explain that the thousands of stickers that volunteers have collected aren't good for anything. A variation of this hoax states that an organization or company will donate a few cents to a worthy charity every time you remail the e-mail message you just received.

A related topic is urban legends. While these often are propagated by e-mail, the Web or in Usenet newsgroups, they are also commonly transmitted by paper or word-of-mouth. There is an entire Usenet newsgroup, alt.folklore.urban, devoted to discussing these. A web site that has archived much of the a.f.u information is at http://www.urbanlegends.com. Occasionally, one of these legends is known to be true, and some are uncertain, but most are known to be false. Examples are kidney theft rings, that we use only 10% of our brains, that hot water freezes faster than cold water, that you can make 10,000 penguins in the Antarctic fall over by flying over them, that there was a ghost visible on the set of "3 Men and a Baby" and that you can see a hanged man in the background of "The Wizard of Oz." There are hundreds of others, many of which are amusing, weird and/or wild.

Another site that is devoted to urban legends is http://www.snopes.com. This site has a randomizer; you can read about a random urban legend and see what people have said about it. Keep an open mind; some of the people talking can be wrong, too!

If you want to do more research, visit http://www.askjeeves.com and ask the questions "Where can I find out about e-mail hoaxes?" and "Where can I find out about urban legends?" Jeeves will then provide you with some sites you can begin to explore. Also, visit www.dejanews.com and search in alt.folklore.urban for interesting topics. I understand that a.f.u can be rude, as people fight over their favorite legends, so be aware that you might see some salty language flying about there.

One final note: I have a copy of an e-mail message that is a parody of the "Good Times" e-mail virus letter. It's hilarious. Sadly, there's no space for it here, but if you have e-mail and would like to receive it, let me know at 70166.342@compuserve.com and I'll forward it to you. No viruses, I promise. Happy hunting!

Addendum to the original article

It is becoming possible to send virus information via e-mail. If you use some of the new e-mail technology, most of which is being propagated by Microsoft, along with fancy graphics and sound, you might also get a virus. Microsoft is working hard to shore up the software, but the power to do fancy things tends to allow an author to do bad things. Such is progress!