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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Is This for Real?Don't get fooled by internet hoaxesOctober 15, 2002 -- If it sounds too good to be... it probably is! Internet hoaxes and scams run the gamut from benign to out and out fraud. Every week I get asked about at least one e-mail hoax. These e-mails promise the moon, usually in the form of some incredible financial payoff. The majority of them are relatively harmless pranks asking the recipient to forward a copy of the e-mail to ten of their friends in order to receive the payoff, which of course never comes. Some of them though have cost people their life's savings. These latter scams are generally an updated iteration of the fraud perpetrated during the 1920s throughout the Midwest by Oscar Hartzell. Throughout the 1920s, Hartzell, an Iowa farm boy, traipsed mid-west America with a pitch that was quite fantastic. He claimed to have seized control of Sir Francis Drake's treasure. After three hundred years in a bank vault it was worth billions. Anyone who contributed towards Oscar's 'legal costs' would be entitled to a share. Over 70,000 people invested, many to the point of bankruptcy. Oscar's ruthless scam caused misery to countless people and destroyed whole families. Today's versions generally claim to be from a bank in Nigeria/Ivory Coast/Ghana/South Africa/Phillipines. The writer asserts that an American, living in their country, has had a certificate of deposit worth $25,000,000 come to maturity in the bank. After contacting the depositor's employer they have found out that the owner has died without a will. The banker goes on to offer the recipient the chance to pretend to be a long-lost relative of the unfortunate CD owner and split the money 40/60 with him. Of course, there is no fortune. The recipient is asked to send increasing amounts of money to prove his or her sincerity, pay bribes, and otherwise lubricate the deal. This scam continues for as long as the money keeps coming. Naturally, not all internet hoaxes are quite as destructive. Many are more nuisance than harmful. They clog up your inbox and waste your time. Most of them offer great rewards for doing very little. One of the more popular ones claims that Bill Gates and America OnLine© have teamed up to try to keep Internet Explorer© the number one web browser in the world. To do this they are testing a new e-mail tracking program. For every person you forward the e-mail to you will receive a specified amount of money. Not only is this type of e-mail tracking not possible, the whole idea of Microsoft and AOL© (the owner of competing Netscape Navigator©) teaming up is ludicrous. In fact America OnLine© founder Steve Case was among the witnesses in the government's Microsoft© antitrust suit. The other popular type of hoax is the bogus virus alert which gets you to forward the alert to everybody you know thereby further clogging up our inboxes. So, how do you know if you're being scammed? Well, the first rule of thumb of course is that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. There really is no free lunch. The second rule of thumb is check it out! To check on most scams try going to the Urban Legends Search Page. Type in a word or two from the e-mail to search. For virus hoaxes try Symantec's Security Response Search.
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