...functions to become unusable or unstable. A relatively harmless example of this is the hoax message that warns Hotmail users that a virus is being spread by MSN Messenger and is not detectable by McAfee or Norton. It includes instructions to delete the file jdbgmgr.exe. In fact, this is a file used by Microsoft developers (the Microsoft Debugger for Java).
Other hoax messages have instructed recipients to delete essential Windows files, rendering their systems unbootable. Never follow virus removal instructions contained in email messages. If a virus is real and can't be removed by antivirus software, the major antivirus vendor Web sites will contain instructions for manually removing it.
#7: No free money
Sci-fi writer Robert A. Heinlein coined the acronym TANSTAAFL (pronounced "tan-stawful"), which stands for "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch." Keep it in mind when you get one of the hundreds of hoax messages boasting of giveaways. One of the most famous ones claims that if you forward the message to other people, Bill Gates, Disney, or some other famous person or company will somehow know how many times you forwarded it and send you money for doing so. Even if some generous soul actually wanted to do this, there is no way they would be able to track your mail and know how many times you forwarded the message.
Variations on this scam include claims that Miller Brewing is giving away free beer, that Abercrombie & Fitch is giving away free clothing, that Coca-Cola is giving away cases of coke, that Dell is giving away free computers, that Nokia is giving away free phones, and so on. In each case, to get your free prize you have to forward the message to a specified number of people (often as high as 25,000).
#8: Playing on your sympathy
Who can resist a request for help — especially when the person who needs help is a little kid? The same "dying child" scams have been floating around the Internet for years, but people still fall for them. They usually describe someone who has a fatal disease, has been the victim of a natural disaster or a terrible accident, or is otherwise in dire straits. Some of these scams ask you to send money; others ask you to send cards or email messages. One variation claims to be from a child who is doing a school project to collect email from as many states and countries as possible. Some, like the "free money" scams, ask you to forward the message to as many people as possible, claiming that some organisation, such as the American Cancer Society or Microsoft, will donate money for each time the message is forwarded.
Some of these may start out as genuine situations, but they keep getting forwarded long after the person has died or the problem has been resolved.
#9: State of fear
A particularly obnoxious type of scam message warns you of some sort of physical danger that doesn't exist. These are often based on urban legends, such as the one that warns of people being abducted from bars and waking up the next morning with their kidneys missing, or the one that warns of a series of cases where victims heard a baby crying outside their door and opened it up, only to be attacked by a serial killer. These types of stories have been around since long before the Internet, but email has given them new life.
A recent version claims that on a certain day, members of some street gang will have an initiation ritual in which prospective members must drive around at night with their headlights off and kill the first driver who flashes his/her lights to let them know.
These messages usually quote "police officials" or "FBI spokespersons" to lend credence to their claims.
Today's hoax may be tomorrow's reality
It would be irresponsible not to emphasise virus writers, hackers, and attackers are coming up with something new literally every day. Some of the warnings that were hoaxes a few years ago have blossomed into real threats today. For instance, in the late 90s, there were messages going around the ‘Net warning that you could get a virus on your mobile phone. At the time, there were no viruses that infected mobile phones. But as phone technology has gotten more sophisticated and modern mobile phones run complex operating systems such as Windows Mobile and Symbian, they have become vulnerable to viruses. Another popular virus hoax in the early days of the Internet claimed you could infect your computer with a virus by simply reading an email message. At that time, email was plain text and you had to open an attachment to risk virus infection; with today's HTML messages, it is indeed possible for code embedded in the HTML to infect your computer.
It's even possible that some criminal may hear of some of the fear-mongering hoaxes and set out to commit copycat crimes. With your computer — and in the rest of your life — you should strive to strike a balance between cynicism and naïvety, exercising caution but not believing everything you hear or read.
You can check out virus warnings you suspect of being hoaxes on the hoax pages maintained by Symantec, McAfee, and other antivirus vendors.
For non-virus messages, check with Snopes or Scambusters.
