The Computer Corner
By Charles Miller, August 18, 2006


Flummoxed by email flimflam?

Not long ago, I received one of those emails warning me of a new and extremely dangerous computer virus. I know the person who sent it to me meant well, but the email was nothing but a hoax.

The fact of the matter is that almost 100 percent of these email warnings are illegitimate. There are several things to look for, and spotting an email hoax is really easy.

The bad news is that there are actually several types of hoaxes bouncing around the internet at any given time. In addition to the bogus virus alerts, these include offers of some kind of free giveaway if you forward the email to enough people. There are also false appeals from fake charities to help sick children. There are also a lot of fake petitions that accomplish nothing, and dire warnings about products, companies or coming changes in government policies.

The good news is that, with a little common sense, most of these email hoaxes are easy to detect.

If the email claims you will receive a prize or cash if you forward the message to enough people, you need to get real! Nobody is going to reward you for forwarding some inane email to all the people in your address book.

Some of the questionable emails appear to be thinly veiled attempts to damage someone or some company. An example of this is the email claiming that household pets have died as a result of licking floors cleaned with a certain brand of cleaner. This is a claim never substantiated.

Here is a technique I use with much success. When I receive one of these suspicious emails, I copy the subject line, or the pertinent part of it, and paste it into a Google search. I put the subject line inside double quotes and add the word “hoax” to the search. If that fails to produce results, I copy and search for the first sentence in the email.

In the case of the email I received the other day from my good friend Martin, his message warned that there was a new virus named “Hauri” on the loose; supposedly it would destroy my hard disk and it could not be detected by any antivirus software. I did a Google search on the words “Hauri” and “hoax” and Google returned 1,260 hits.

I scanned down the list and found the names of several reputable software companies I recognized and believed I could trust. Their pages indicated that the alleged “Hauri” virus was just another hoax.

Absolutely the best indicator of a hoax email is this: If the email says to “forward this message to all your friends,” then it is almost always a hoax. Hoax writers want their material to be spread around the internet as much as possible, so every hoax email will try to exhort you to forward the email to everyone in your address book.

Before forwarding one of these bogus emails, please ask yourself the following:

Does the email come to you from someone you do not know?

Does the email fail to provide links to sources where you can verify the information?

Is the language of the email urgent or over-the-top?
Does the email ask you to send it to everyone in your address book?

If you answer “yes” to one or more of these questions, you are probably dealing with a hoax.

Although answering in the affirmative does not conclusively prove any email is a hoax, any single “yes” answer does warrant further investigation. So, please take time to check it out before you hit the [Forward] button to send that next virus warning to me.

Charles Miller is a freelance computer consultant, a frequent visitor to San Miguel since 1981 and now practically a full-time resident. He may be contacted at 044-415-153-8528 or email FAQ@SMAguru.com.