From the older printed letters to the newer electronic kind, they all have three recognizable parts:įirst, there is a hook, to catch your interest and get you to read the rest of the letter. Hoax messages also follow the same pattern as a chain letter.Ĭhain letters and most hoax messages all have a similar pattern. Check these pages or the pages of other hoax sites to see if we have already declared the warning a hoax. Check the person's web site or the person's company web site to see if the hoax has been responded to there. If thousands of people start sending them mail asking if the message is real, that essentially constitutes an unintentional denial of service attack on that person. You do need to be a little careful verifying the person as the apparent author may be a real person who has nothing to do with the hoax. If a manager at the company sends the warning, the message is doubly backed by the company's and the manager's reputations.īoth of these items make it very difficult to claim a warning is a hoax so you must do your homework to see if the claims are real and if the person sending out the warning is a real person and is someone who would know what they are talking about. Even though the person sending the warning may not have a clue what he is talking about, the prestige of the company backs the warning, making it appear real. If the janitor at a large technological organization sends a warning to someone outside of that organization, people on the outside tend to believe the warning because the company should know about those things. When we say credibility by association we are referring to who sent the warning. With a little research, you find that there is no such thing as an nth-complexity infinite binary loop and that processors are designed to run loops for weeks at a time without damage. The first time you read this, it sounds like it might be something real. For example, the Good Times hoax says that ".if the program is not stopped, the computer's processor will be placed in an nth-complexity infinite binary loop which can severely damage the processor.". If the warning uses the proper technical jargon, most individuals, including technologically savvy individuals, tend to believe the warning is real. There are two known factors that make a successful hoax, they are: Next, look at what makes a successful hoax. No real warning message from a credible source will tell you to send this to everyone you know. This should raise a red flag that the warning is probably a hoax. Probably the first thing you should notice about a warning is the request to "send this to everyone you know" or some variant of that statement.
The chain letters that deal in money play on people's greed and are illegal no matter what they say in the letter. They play on your fear of bad luck and the realization that it is almost trivial for you to send them on. Chain letters, like their printed ancestors, generally offer luck or money if you send them on. Who wouldn't want to warn their friends about some terrible virus that is destroying people's systems? Or, how could you not want to help this poor little girl who is about to die from cancer? It is hard to say no to these messages when you first see them, though after a few thousand have passed through your mail box you (hopefully) delete them without even looking.Ĭhain letters are lumped in with the hoax messages because they have the same purpose as the hoax messages but use a slightly different method of coercing you into passing them on to everyone you know. Most of the hoax messages play on your need to help other people. Hoax messages try to get you to pass them on to everyone you know using several different methods of social engineering. A few of the sympathy messages do describe a real situation but that situation was resolved years ago so the message is not valid and has not been valid for many years. The messages they contain are usually untrue. Internet hoaxes and chain letters are e-mail messages written with one purpose to be sent to everyone you know. Information About Hoaxes and Chain Letters
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