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Identifying Hoaxes & Web Legends
Chain Letters and Share Button are familiar to anyone with an e-mail or facebook account. Whether its a warning about a new product crime wave or internet virus sent by a stranger or well-intentioned friends or family members. Please for the safety of the millions of new internet users made popular by the use of smart phones, tablets, ipads and the like who are not familiar to web hoaxes and scams practise due dilligance before you Share or forward. Do your best to verify the information before following any instructions or passing the message along to all your friends and family. This site is deticated to helping you sisern all this information and protect you and your friends from falling victom to this somtimes harmless but somtimes very dangerouse practise of perpetuating web legends hoaxes and scams.
[ad name=”G-Rectangle-right”]There are two main types of abused misinformation:
- Hoaxes — Hoaxes attempt to trick or defraud users. A hoax could be malicious, instructing users to delete a file necessary to the operating system by claiming it is a virus. It could also be a scam that convinces users to send money or personal information.
- Web legends — Web legends are designed to be redistributed and usually warn users of a threat or claim to be notifying them of important or urgent information. Another common form are the e-mails that promise users monetary rewards for forwarding the message or suggest that they are signing something that will be submitted to a particular group. Urban legends usually have no negative effect aside from wasted bandwidth and time.
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