We all know them. The email your friend sent to you and all his other contacts in address book. They usually warn you about a “dangerous computer virus that will melt your hard drive” , “win a free laptop“, “there is a little girl either lost or in need of a new kidney” or “don’t get out of your car at petrol stations or your car will be stolen“.
95% of these emails are just hoaxes playing on human compassion. The fact is the emails warning about computer viruses become the virus itself – using unsuspecting people who mean well to spread the rumors to everyone in their address book, clogging up mailboxes and eating up your bandwidth.
How do you know if the email is a hoax? Ask Google.
Here is what I’d like you to do. Next time you get a suspicious email warning you about this or that, copy the entire first line of the email text into Google search and see what comes up. It’s that simple. I can almost guarantee the first three results will lead to sites like hoax-slayer.com, urbanlegends.com or museumofhoaxes.com. This way you can find how much truth there is to the email you just received, and perhaps let the poor fellow who just sent you the hoax know he has nothing to worry about.
So the moral is this – please think before passing on the hoax email you just received. Google the first line of email text first to see if it is a false alarm.
How do you deal with mass hoax emails?
