Letters from Nigeria asking for urgent funds, fake lottery prizes and bogus bank emails are among the blatant scams that land in our email inboxes daily. And for the most part, these fake emails are easy to detect. Sometimes, though, the deception isn’t so obvious. The following are highlights of some of the most persistent hoaxes that may have hit your inbox or Twitter feed at one time or another. How do I tell what’s real and what’s not, you ask? When in doubt, check sites such as snopes.com, truthorfiction.com and hoax-slayer.com for the real-deal skinny.
Celebrity Death Hoaxes
Did you read about Jackie Chan’s death? In June, someone circulated a message on social media saying that the Rush Hour actor had fallen to his death while filming a stunt. Chan quickly debunked this rumour. Other celebs who have supposedly met their demise: Justin Bieber, Lil Wayne, Johnny Depp, Rihanna and many others.
Fake Virus Warnings
Have you received emails about the Windows Live Update virus, the Breaking Dawn virus or the Life is Beautiful virus? These and other email hoaxes, packed with alarming details about opening the “worst virus ever” (including “quotes” from authorities), urge you to forward the info to all of your contacts. Instead, depending on the virus, they’ll erase your hard drive, spam your everyone in your email address book or “clickjack” you and your friends (i.e., send you to a website you hadn’t planned on visiting). Experts’ advice: delete the emails. To check if a virus is real, visit McAfee or F-Secure.
Unhealthy Hoaxes
In 2010, someone started circulating an email, apparently signed by a cardiologist at the renowned Mayo Clinic, with advice on heart attacks. Around the same time, an email claiming to be from Johns Hopkins Hospital offered several “updates” about cancer treatment. The takeaway here is that while there may even be some truth in the messages, neither email was legit – they did not come from the May Clinic or Johns Hopkins at all. Lesson learned: when it comes to health, always ask your doctor.