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Internet hoaxes spread false stories or images through emails, forums, and blogs. They can be harmless or harmful, and often target people’s willingness to believe the outrageous. Hoaxes can last for years, but websites exist to expose them. Common types include virus warnings and misinformation.
Internet hoaxes are stories that spread across the Internet, often through emails, forums and blogs, reporting stories or displaying untrue images or distortions of the truth. These types of hoaxes can simply be harmless tales spread to play on people’s inherent willingness to believe in the outrageous when presented realistically or they can be more harmful efforts to crash servers and spread viruses. Internet hoaxes have been around for almost as long as the Internet itself, and many of them have become part of modern urban legends.
Just like other types of hoaxes, Internet hoaxes are created to try to trick a person into believing something that is not true. This is often done for a variety of reasons, from people who enjoy deceiving others, to hoaxes that act as a front for more nefarious purposes. Most Internet hoaxes happen and reach some level of popularity or distribution, but then fade away pretty quickly or die out in light of reality. The most impressive hoaxes, however, can last much longer and can persist for years while continuing to circulate on the Internet.
Some of the more common types of internet hoaxes include those that claim to warn of some type of virus being passed around the internet. These claims are usually targeting something that is safe, such as indicating that some security program or website is spreading viruses or stealing passwords, or misleading people about a real security threat. The latter type of hoax can be quite harmful as it can warn about something false, while spreading a virus through alert mail or trick people into taking potentially harmful actions under the guise of protecting their computers.
Other Internet hoaxes may have less to do with trying to install malicious software on a computer and more to do with simply spreading misinformation. These hoaxes include outrageous claims such as websites selling human flesh, New York City vendors selling kittens in glass bottles, and a tourist captured in a photograph on the observation deck of the World Trade Center shortly before the September 11, 2001 attacks. are also numerous hoaxes each year detailing the fake deaths of various celebrities.
All of these internet hoaxes should be dismissed immediately, but many people are so strongly drawn to the outrageous and the impossible, that such things are given credence. The “truth is stranger than fiction” argument often persuades people to believe the absurd, accepting a fanciful view of reality that might otherwise be immediately rejected. Fortunately, a number of websites have been developed that exist solely to expose these types of hoaxes and help people distinguish fact from deception.
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