‘Send this email to everyone you know – you could save someone’s life’
‘Forward this message to all your friends ASAP to warn them of this deadly virus’
Many of you must have received emails with similar exhortations from your friends(with a long list of contacts appearing in the ‘To’ and ‘cc’ fields) warning you of dangerous computer viruses doing the rounds hidden in emails carrying a particular message in the subject line or an attachment which, when opened, will unleash a deadly virus which will crash your computer’s hard disk irretrievably(read about the’Osama Hanged’ hoax at
https://us.mcafee.com/virusInfo/default.asp?id=description&virus_k=140696)
You might also have received emails which claim to inform you of medical breakthroughs on how you could save a loved one in case he / she has a heart attack or brain stroke( just last week I received one such mail about Cough CPR - see https://snopes.com/medical/homecure/coughcpr.asp)
The vast majority of these mails are hoaxes. The best way of finding out whether such supposedly helpful information is true or not is simply to do a Google search. Select part of a sentence and enter them in the Google text field within double inverted commas(you could also add ‘+ hoax’). The first one or two pages of search – results will usually be enough to tell you if it is a hoax.
You could also directly visit sites like https://snopes.com and http://www.hoax-slayer.com.
The internet and free email services have been wonderful inventions enabling fast, convenient and cheap communication among people throughout the world. These very qualities are also responsible for the worldwide spread of hoax chain emails. Fortunately, a few minutes, a little effort and a friend called Google are all it takes to check the veracity of such information. So the next time you receive such an email do not forward it immediately. Use Google(or some other search engine if you wish) to verify the contents. If you are too busy to do so, wait till you have time. You will be doing yourself a favour by detecting misinformation and doing others a favour by not spreading it.
And may I add: please forward this message to all your friends.