People fall victim to email hoaxes and urban legends.
When this happens, they then fill up everyone's inbox with unwanted emails. The
best defense for preventing this is to get educated. This is an attempt to
explain them and hopefully prevent you from falling victim to them.
Email Hoaxes
Email hoaxes come in many forms. The most common ones
contain references to a vicious virus that will destroy your computer. The
email message will urge you to forward the message to everyone you know. It may
also provide you with steps to remove the virus from your computer. Do not
forward this type of message to other people. Do not follow the steps to remove
it from your computer. The message may attempt to validate itself by stating
that news of this virus was just released on CNN Headline News. These emails
actually become a virus because they spread around the world clogging up the
Internet and filling up everyone's email folder with useless information. The
next time you receive an email that instantly makes you feel compelled to
forward it on to other people, think long and hard before you proceed. You
might be another victim who is contributing to the traffic jam on the
information superhighway...
What is an "Urban Legend"?
Urban legends are similar to hoaxes. Urban legends
usually do NOT refer to a computer virus. Instead, urban legends will tell you
a story about a place, thing, or person. The story may not always be false,
although the majority of them are. The story will always seem urgent and tell
either a funny or horrifying tale. You will feel the need to forward the
message to many other people in an effort to humor them or warn them of some
impending doom. The few stories that turn out to be true are almost guaranteed
to be so old that forwarding them to other people is useless.
In neither of the above cases should the Fulton
County School email system be used to spread these emails. Our email system
already sends and receives an average of 369,500 messages per week. We maintain
60,000,000,000 bytes (60 gigabytes) of your email every day. We don't need
these extra messages adding to the overwhelming pile of data...
If you want more information on hoaxes and urban
legends refer to the Internet links below: