Hoaxes - Definition and Descriptions

Thursday, January 20, 2005

Hoaxes - A hoax is simply a false warning about some danger that really does not exist. They are spread primarily through "chain" emails but can also spread through web sites, instant messengers, snail mail, or by word of mouth. A hoax is not a virus or any other type of program it is simply false information. Usually these will make their way to you "through the grape vine" someone tells you that someone told them that they were told by so and so that such and such is extremely dangerous and needs to be da da da with.

Though quite a few of these hoaxes can be quite funny, it is not however, funny that they can actually do real harm. "if a hoax is nothing but information, how can it do harm?" the answer to that is easy. In trying to avoid the percieved danger the hoax may either directly or indirectly cause you to actually do harm. This may be in the form of telling you that there is a new deadly computer virus ravaging the interet that no antivirus program can detect, but that this virus always is in a file with one name. Usually these are written by some prankster just because they can and they think its funny that people actually go around deleting the file/s and forwarding this hoax message on to their friends. When in fact the file/s your told to delete are really files that Your operating system actually "NEEDS" to function and by deleting them you effectively kill your computer.

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