Poor Jessica?

You just received e-mail from a friend that forwarded it from a friend that forwarded it from a friend. It's about little Jessica Mydeck who is seven years old and suffering from an acute and rare case of cerebral carcinoma. Jessica's condition is terminal and the doctors have given her six months to live. As part of her dying wish Jessica wanted to start a chain letter to inform people of her condition and to send a message to everyone to live life to the fullest and enjoy every moment. Furthermore, several corporate sponsors agreed to donate three cents to cancer research for every new person that gets the message forwarded to them. The American Cancer Society is mentioned at the end of the message.

Sounds heart wrenching doesn't it? Should you forward the message to help cancer research? The American Cancer Society supports the plea so what harm can come from forwarding the message to your friends?

It's a hoax folks. The message does nothing more than clutter up mailboxes, take up time to download and more importantly it uses up bandwidth on the Internet. The originator is simply playing a game and laughing at how gullible people are. If you forward the message to three friends and they forward it to three friends, etc., 59,000 people will see the message after it's forwarded 10 times!

How does one find out if a message is a hoax? You can use your Internet  search engine and enter keywords from the message text. In this case entering "Jessica Mydeck" brought up numerous web pages, including that of the American Cancer Society exposing the hoax. Had you tried the Cancer Society's e-mail address shown you would have found that it was a fake.

The Jessica Mydeck story is now an old hoax. Do you want the latest one? It starts with " Hello, my name is David Lawitts and I have severe lung and throat cancer due to second hand smoke...."

Internet tax?

I still receive messages on an Internet tax bill that suggest that I write to my congressman. One ends with "Send this email to all Americans on your list and tell your friends and relatives to write to their congressman and say 'No!' to Bill 602P." Bill 602P? Bills in congress are not numbered like that. It turns out it's a Canadian bill number. By entering "bill 602p" in your search engine numerous web pages both in the U.S. and Canada expose the hoax. Congressmen are often so deluged with messages that they find it necessary to expose the hoax on their web page. Check out all suggestions to write to your congressman. Many are a hoax.

Telephone scam?

Have you seen this message? "BEWARE of anyone posing as an AT&T technician or any other telephone company pseudo employee asking you to dial 90#?" By doing so you'll be giving the requesting individual full access to your home phone for making toll calls. A quick search on the Internet reveals a web page from AT&T that says that the 90# scam has been around for years and is directed at businesses, hospitals, government agencies and other organizations that use telephone switching equipment called private branch exchanges (PBXs) to handle their calls. In other words the scam warning has nothing to do with your home phone and yet it continues to make the rounds.

Warning: Terrible virus?

Everybody forwards virus warnings to their friends. It seems only proper to do so. But the fact remains that most virus warnings are hoaxes and all you're doing is perpetuating them. It takes a smart fellow to create a virus so most nerds settle on a hoax to get their jollies. Fortunately there are many organizations on the web that continually check new viruses and hoaxes. Forward a virus warning to your friends only if you are convinced it is real. Check it out by entering keywords in your search engine or by going direct to web pages such as:

http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/

http://antivirus.about.com/compute/antivirus/msub14.htm?iam=mt

http://www.windrivers.com/virus/index.htm

Real viruses do exist!

Real viruses do exist and they need to be recognized to do something about them. Nowadays everybody should have an anti-virus program. A free one called F-Prot is available at http://www.complex.is/f-prot/. Some people, however, believe that a good anti-virus program is one you must pay for. I'm not taking sides on the matter. I still use F-Prot and run it periodically, especially when I download software programs. I'm sure I'll regret using it if I ever get infected with a virus.