Our Guide to the basics
Please read through our guide outlining the basics in spotting hoaxes and scams. Its brief at the moment but we hope to expand it soon. Of course if you do have a suspected hoax or scam and you still don't know if its real or fake, search our archives, see if its there!Also, if you do get stuck on any technical words in this article, you can always check our Glossary for help.
Contents
Fake Virus Hoax
Superstitious Emails Hoax
Email Media Hoax
Watch What Happens Hoax!
You Send We Track Hoax
Charity Emails Hoax
Bank Detail Scams
Advanced Fee Fraud Scams
Check Cashing Scams
Email Malware Scams
General Internet Hoax
Your System is Infected! Scam
Fake Photos
Facebook Hoax
YouTube Hoax
Auction/Sale Site Scams
Ponzi Schemes
Fake Product or Service
Summary
Types of E-mail hoaxes
The general aim of an e-mail hoax is to waste time and bandwidth by propagating as much as possible. The common aim of an Email scam is to generally steal money or assets from you. Most hoaxes do this by encouraging you to forward this to as many as your friends as you can, where in turn, they will waste their time reading and then forwarding again. They’re pests, and can cost people a lot of time and potentially money. This is called chain mail. This article aims to help you recognise which emails are fake and which are genuine, so ideally, in the future you know which ones deserve the Delete button.1. Fake Virus Hoaxes
Some of the most common types of email hoaxes are emails warning the reader of an impending virus that’s spreading across cyberspace. Generally (by generally we mean 99 percent of the time) these emails are complete hoaxes warning of viruses that simply do not exist. The hoaxes often claim the ‘virus’ will damage the users computer even by just reading the email. They are often written in a pseudo-technical language to impress the reader and gain credibility, though to any computer expert it is clear the claims are often impossible. There isn’t really a way of causing any detrimental effect to a computer by just opening an email (this does NOT apply to email attachments which can often be harmful) If you receive a virus warning, whether or not it contains an attachment, the best course of action would be to just delete it, or seek help from an expert. This type of email hoax is so popular that many Internet Security companies claim they receive more calls and emails from customers concerning fake viruses rather than genuine ones! The easiest way to spot a virus hoax is that it will frequently be written in plain text, sometimes with bad grammar, and will urge you to send it on to your contact list. Also many try to gain credibility by saying phrases such as “CNN announced…” “AOL/Microsoft/IBM report….” Which again is simply untrue.If your in doubt, visit the website of a popular antivirus software vendor. If they back up the claims of the email it may be worth it to send it on, but in the vast majority of cases, the antivirus company will never have heard of the virus.
We have an extensive list of the most popular fake virus hoaxes in our database.
2. Superstitious emails hoaxes
The superstitious email - the type that preys on the most credulous and gullible people in cyberspace. The type that serves literally no purpose but to propagate and annoy. We have all seen them, send this to 10 people or have bad luck for 12 years – send this to 20 people or you’ll never find love – its all the same meaningless drivel. Many variants of the superstitious email include apparent success stories of people who did send it and received good luck (e.g. within 10 days I got promoted!) – though curiously don’t offer any explanation to how the success stories got added to the email after it was already sent? Maybe an excellent example of foresight perhaps?If you do find it hard to say no to these types of chain mail, think of 2 things – 1. Does you equally silly email contact want to be burdened with this waste of time? 2. If for example the email promises good luck for 10 years and you send it to the required amount of people, what happens when you get the next email that threatens bad luck? Is the above contract voided? Do you want to enter into such a silly fickle agreement with the writer of this email? How does the writer of this email even know you will receive bad luck if you don’t send it on? Witches maybe, though we would imagine black magic, voodoo and the sorts have better things to do than track forwarded mail.
Generally we recommend just seeing it for what it is, a waste of time and bandwidth, and please do everyone a favour and send this straight to the recycling bin.
3. Email Media Hoaxes
Occasionally fake news stories will propagate like wildfire, ranging from the death of a celebrity to a spider outbreak in South America. If the story is genuine, then visit a popular news site for confirmation. Don’t forward these emails until you do this, as often the news stories are simply fakes. An easy way to spot fake media hoaxes is that they’ll tell you to send it on to as many people as possible.4. Watch What Happens Next Hoax
Answer: nothing. Many emails claim that something amazing will happen if you send it to so many contacts, ranging from the unknown to a pink elephant flying across your screen. It is technically impossible to attach any dynamic coding to an email that will let this happen – if it was it would be a major security hole! It can’t be done. All you will see is confirmation that you’ve sent it to so many people and now wasting their time.5. You Send We Track Hoax
Often you can receive emails stating that if you forward them, it’ll be tracked, and everybody who you send it to who then sends it on again will earn you money. The most popular variant of this one is the Bill Gates scam, who offered to give money to everyone who forwards a specific email, another one is to prove you are still using your Hotmail email account, otherwise it’ll be shut down. It’s easiest just to nip this one in the bud - you can’t track emails. It can’t be done. Even if the e-mail had some dynamic attachment, it would have to be executed by the recipient to do anything, and we all know how bad executing unknown attachments is. So that pretty much covers it - any email claiming to track where it goes down the forwarding line is simply lying, as it cannot be done. This also in a large part covers charity emails which often use this premise as well, but we’ll cover those separately still.6. Charity Emails Hoax
These are the emails that employ the dubious method of pulling at the recipients heart strings in order for them to forward it. Typical variants tell the recipient that in order for some dying child to survive, you have to forward the email where a charity has promised to donate money per forward. Its intrinsically linked to tracked emails and the same realisation applies, you can’t track emails being forwarded. It’s impossible. Really. As for that dying child, we can assure you that the email was referring to no specific child.7. Bank Detail Scams
As a general rule of thumb, never click on a link that your ‘bank’ sends you. If you do, definitely don’t enter your personal banking information on whatever page it takes you to, even if it looks like the real deal. Its an example of phishing and because these scams are so popular we have given them their own section on this website. We’ve seen some pretty convincing fake bank emails and web pages in the recent past. If you do click on any links in an email like this, the giveaway is to look at the address bar - your banks name will appear but will it be the banks domain? For example a fake Natwest email took us not to www.natwest.com (genuine site) rather it took us to www.rfsfff.natwest.com (scammer site) - rfsfff is the domain, not Natwest, and god knows who is in control of rfsfff.com. The emails themselves will typically ask you to renew your details for (ironically) security reasons, or may even claim that someone was trying to access your details and they need to verify who you are. If in doubt, ring your bank, or try tapping in the name of your bank on this site and see what known scams we have that are presently out there.8. Advanced Fee Fraud Scams
Advanced Fee Fraud scams are the most outrageous and costly of email scams. They will start by sending you an email. How they got your email address can vary, they may have just guessed it or pulled it from a mailing list. Your name will rarely be on the email, which is the first sign the email is fake, considering how the rest of the email reads. Generally, most of these scams start from outside the country, and they make no attempt to hide this. The emails will say you are entitled to or have somehow inherited a lot of money, and that you need to respond to this email to claim it. The amount of money will typically be in the millions of dollars and is nearly always measured in USD (United States Dollars) as Americans seem to be the target victims. Once the victim has responded to the email, the scammer will typically ask for personal details and then ask you to send small money "deposits" to that they can transfer the money to you. The desposits are disguised as security or courier fees. Once the victim pays, the requests for payments continue and the victim becomes more and more invested in the scam. Of course as you would expect the promised funds never reach the victim, who by this point is often out of thousands of dollars, with no hope of a refund. Popular examples of Advanced Fee Scams are Nigerian scams, or from other African nations. These typically say that some politician needs to get money out of the country into a foreigners bank account, and that the victim can keep a percentage of the money. Others include dying people wanting to get rid of a fortune. Other variants are also circulating but they all promise money and will never deliver. For a closer look at Advanced Fee Fraud, click here.9. Check Cashing Scams
Often these can get mixed up with the Advanced Fee Fraud because often the initial email can look similar. This is where the scammer will send you an email, and for some reason or other it will involve sending you a cheque. (though this may not become apparent at first, it is something the scammers reveal once they have you hooked) Once they send you a cheque (or money order) they make up a reason why you have to send a percentage of that back, or forward it to somebody else. Cheques take a matter of days to be verified or cleared, but a loophole means you can still send money before this happens. The cheques you are sent, are of course - fake, and since you have just sent them money (either from the cheque or from your own funds) you cannot get that back. Meaning the cheque will of course bounce, and you are left not only without the money from that cheque but also without the money you just sent to the scammers! Popular variants are fake job offers that want to pay you through cheques and popular methods are through the companies MoneyGram and Western Union. Avoid anybody who wants to pay for an item or services through cheque, and if you do - ALWAYS wait before the cheque clears verification and the funds are officially transferred before giving anything away.9. Email Malware Scams
We don’t usually concentrate on these on this site as they are a whole new thing, but we like to touch on the basics as they are scams in the way they want you to open the email attachments. These scams can really be dangerous, and how they work is they will give you reason to open the file attachment, claiming it’s a valentines card, or some credit receipt, or a celebrity sex tape, or anything like that. Never open email attachments from unverifiable sources, as these can genuinely damage your computer. Opening the email itself is fine; it’s just the attachments that can harm.General Internet Hoax
These general hoaxes tend to be merely Internet rumors that have started some way, most likely escalated in some way. Good examples of these are the Masal Bugduv story, or the Federal Bill 602P hoax, that started as simple false Internet rumors and then for some reason or other just spiraled out of control. Also anything we cannot list under a specific category gets listed here. It serves as a miscellaneous category.Your System is Infected! Scam
A popular way for scammers to persuade you to download files from the Internet is to tell you your computer is already infected with a virus and you need to download antivirus software herein to prevent further damage. Harmful files aren’t just limited to email attachments. Anything you download from the world wide web can potentially be dangerous. The ironic thing in this instance is the “antivirus” software you’re being prompted to download will only make your computer worse if anything. Remember this: websites don’t have access to the files stored on your computer, so if an Internet window pops up informing you its “scanning” your computer and then reports that your “infected” then it’s a complete hoax, and is just trying to get you do download malware onto your computer.The best antivirus software out there you have to pay for, like Norton Antivirus from Symantec. There are free ones out there, like AVG, Spybot S&D and Ad-aware which are pretty good also, but be aware that for every free genuine program out there, there are another 10 that are fake and potentially dangerous. An example of this is winantiviruspro, which is an example of a browser hijacker which will install itself on your computer pretending to be antivirus software. Nothing is black and white, so the best thing to do in instances like this is to ask an expert, who can give you advice on how to proceed. Also Wikipedia have a good list of programs that pose as antivirus software when they are actually malicious. Click here for the list.
Fake Photos
These hoaxes come into two major categories – the first is ‘photoshopped’ photos, where a clever photo manipulation whiz has put together a fake photo that can often look very convincing. They usually come included with an equally fake news story. Examples of this are ‘giant’ pets, like cats and dogs (though we concede there is at least one photo of a giant cat out there that’s actually real!) or a popular example is the 9/11 Tourist photo.The second category is photos that are actually real, but the text that comes a long with them is putting them in a context that makes them fake. Examples of this are the Air France Photos - the photos themselves are captures from the TV series Lost (okay that doesn’t make them quite real) but the text that goes with it tells you the photos are from the Air France Flight that tragically crashed in the Atlantic.
Good fake photos can be pretty hard to spot, especially if they don’t show off major news stories, meaning it can be hard to backup the photo on another site. Generally the rule of thumb is if you don’t think its real, it probably is not real.
Facebook Hoaxes
This is simply a category that lists hoaxes that have started on popular social networking site Facebook. As Facebook as grown highly popular, so has hoaxes originating from it, like fake celebrity accounts or fake email regarding the site. Facebook have a good contact section (even we’ve emailed them!) so if your not sure of anything you see on their site, you can always contact them directly with any questions.YouTube Hoaxes
These hoaxes can be very popular. Fake bloggers are the most common type of hoax on YouTube, like the infamous lonelygirl15 that suckered thousands a few years back.Auction/Sale Site Scams
This is a very specific type of scam which effects auction sites like EBay, whereas someone will want to buy an item from you, ask for the payment details (usually the seller will use PayPal) – the scammer will make the payment and then the seller sends the item to the address the scammer provided. However, the payment will then be reversed and the seller is left without the item and has received no payment. The scammers use fake details like email addresses, and the address it is sent to would typically be empty. It’s very hard to get your money back even when contacting the police, believe us, we know people who have been fooled by this.On local selling sites, where it would be usual for the buyer to pick up the item (like gumtree) – the scammer will usually say they are out of the country or not in the area and cannot pick up the item, and can it be posted to an address the scammer provides. The same scam will then follow.
To not get fooled by these scams take some simple precautionary measures – on local sites like gumtree, only accept face to face pick up so you cannot be scammed. On sites like EBay where this is generally unrealistic, you can see feedback from other users about what they have said about him. Try to avoid people with no or bad feedback. Also wait until the payment has been confirmed before sending the item (confirmed means it is too late for the payment to be reversed)
Ponzi Scheme
The term Ponzi is coined by one of its early prolific members, Charles Ponzi, who was infamous for using the technique in the early 1900s. What a Ponzi scheme is, is effectivly an investment scam. Investment schemes usually focus on a product or service that is likely to make a profit, so investors themselves will hence make a profit - Ponzi scheme differ to this is respect that there is no real product or service available, either by the Ponzi operators admission, or the Ponzi operator has made up a product that simply does not exist, or is of such poor quality it can never make a return on the investment. Because no product or service is being effectively utlisied, the operators have to charge some sort of "sign up" fee, which will typically go to either the operator or early investors, similar to a pyramid scheme. Because the only money coming into the scam is from new recruits, the overall payout will always be less than the overal payin, hence the majority of the investors will lose out. Examples of ponzi schemes are "surfing" schemes, where people are paid in credit for surfing promoted websites. This is an example of their being no product or service making a profit. Also, scams like Tazoodle are often referred to as Ponzi schemes, in that the Tazoodle "search engine" product does not exist, or is of such poor quality that it will never make money, so investors will lose out overall.Fake Product or Service
Many of these schemes are based on the Ponzi format (pyramid with a focus on recruiting new people) but those have their own category above. This category is for the companies out their claiming to provide a product or service, and then simply keep your money when you pay them and don't give you anything in return. It's the most unimaginative of Internet crimes, yet prolific nonetheless - kind of like taking your money and running. Online pharmaceutical companies are a common example of this type of scam.Summary
How to summarise? Always be aware. In this virtual reality the Internet provides us, there are no police out on patrol. We all have to be aware of what we are doing and the potential effects of doing it. Always take everything with a pinch of salt on the Internet. The combination of an imaginatation, Photoshop and your email address means that anyone in the world can send you offical looking hoaxes right to your doorstep. A nice looking logo and sentences with technical jargon does not mean that any particular email or website is bona fide genuine. Use your common sense, use this website, and use experts if you are not sure. Never send a hoax email "just in case its real". Never visit a website asking for confidential information, and never ever pay for a product advertised in an email full of misspellings and bad grammer!!By Craig, ThatsNonsense.com 30/07/09
