Guest Blogger Kevin Jarrett, a parent, teacher, and ed tech expert, wants bNetS@vvy readers to be able to tell the difference between a legitimate email message and an email hoax. In his second post for bNetS@vvy, Kevin again shows us that if we want to help keep children safe online, we first need to know how to keep ourselves safe online.
If you’re reading this, you have a computer (no, duh?). If you have a computer, you almost certainly have an email address. If you have an email address, you’ve probably seen messages like this (credit: F-Secure.com):
PLEASE FORWARD THIS WARNING AMONG FRIENDS, FAMILY AND CONTACTS:
You should be alert during the next days:
Do not open any message with an attached filed called
“Invitation” regardless of who sent it. It is a virus
that opens an Olympic Torch which “burns” the whole
hard disc C of your computer. This virus will be
received from someone who has your e-mail address in
his/her contact list, that is why you should send
this e-mail to all your contacts.
It is better to receive this message 25 times than
to receive the virus and open it.
If you receive a mail called “invitation”, though
sent by a friend, do not open it and shut down your
computer immediately. This is the worst virus
announced by CNN, it has been classified by Microsoft
as the most destructive virus ever. This virus was
discovered by McAfee yesterday, and there is no repair
yet for this kind of virus. This virus simply destroys
the Zero Sector of the Hard Disc, where the vital
information is kept.FORWARD THIS E-MAIL TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW . . .
REMEMBER: IF YOU SEND IT TO THEM, YOU WILL BENEFIT ALL OF US.
Yes, it’s the ubiquitous email hoax, a message forwarded to you (and usually many of your friends) requesting your most urgent attention. Perhaps the sender is asking you to sign a petition to President Obama regarding Social Security benefits for illegal aliens; maybe they are offering unbelievable photos of an airplane disintegrating in mid-flight; they might be warning you about cell phone numbers being released to telemarketers; or, they are spreading the word about a lost teenager; they could be cautioning you about a crackdown on speeders in your area; they might want to make sure you don’t open an message that could erase your hard drive; they might even be exploiting our collective interest in helping stop the spread of cancer. Either way, they are all hoaxes. Untrue. False. A waste of your time, effort and resources. Or worse.
photo credit: kevinzhengli
When deciding to write this article, I second-guessed myself, because my sense is that most people today GET IT: we don’t forward these emails anymore, right? Well, a search of my “sent” folder proved otherwise. I received (and debunked) four email hoaxes so far in 2009. I responded to two in 2008, five in 2007, and two in 2006. While my experience hardly qualifies as a proxy for the rest of the free world, it’s clear that in my case the problem has not gone away.
So what do we do about it? We need to educate those around us about the problem and gently offer a correction when needed.
The first step is to be vigilant ourselves. This article offers great suggestions on how to spot email hoaxes. In my experience, the following signs point to a likely email hoax:
- Coming to you as part of a large email blast (many recipients)
- The “urgency” or “severity” of the warning
- Body of the email asking/requiring you to “tell everyone you know”
- References to AOL, Microsoft, General Motors, the US Government, or some large multinational corporation
- Any offer of money, particularly in exchange for forwarding the message
Whenever I encounter such an email, I head over to my favorite hoax-busting site, Snopes.com. In my view, Snopes has the best hoax database and a proud history of debunking a wide variety of Internet myths. A simple search using a few words or a phrase (the email subject line works well), and in a matter of seconds you’ll have a URL you can share with the sender to let them know they’ve been duped.
It somewhat goes without saying, but, there’s one thing you DEFINITELY should NOT DO: do NOT forward the email to everyone in your address book!
But a quandry emerges: do you also alert the others on distribution about the hoax? I asked my Twitter network and most said they would tell the sender privately but would “reply all” if the information was potentially harmful to people or property. I’ve done both, and have at times caught flack from people who took umbrage at being corrected (even though I’m always gentle). But a “reply all” can exacerbate the situation if you’re not careful.
photo credit: The Moonstone Archive
Here’s the problem: when you “reply all” and everyone’s email address gets loaded in the “To:” field, you are about to inadvertently spread those email addresses around the Internet - to be harvested by spambots and other miscreants. The solution? Copy and paste the recipient email addresses into the “BCC” field to hide them, and put the original sender’s email address in the “To:” field. The Department of Homeland Security’s Cyber Security Tip ST04-008 explains it all.
Hopefully, your kind and gentle ‘correction’ will have its intended effect and the sender of the email will remember to check Snopes before sending you another similar message. In some cases, they may persist; if so, I highly recommend you reply to them with this simple URL: http://www.thanksno.com/. Click the link and you’ll see why. Simple. Straightforward. Effective.
Remember folks, when it comes to preventing hoaxes and other useless emails from clogging up the Internet, we all have to do our part. You can begin by forwarding this message…no really…it’s ok!
Kevin Jarrett
Guest blogger Kevin Jarrett is a parent, teacher, and ed tech expert from Northfield, NJ.
Click here for more of Kevin’s bNetS@vvy work.
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