Hoax

As Hoax (English for joke, joke, practical jokes, and dizziness) is now usually referred to a hoax, for example, SMS, MMS or in books, magazines or newspapers, by e -mail, instant messenger or other means ( social networks) disseminated, considered by many to be true and will be transfered to friends, colleagues, relatives and other people.

Word Meaning

The word hoax is occupied for the first time in 1796. Its origin is not clearly established, but it is assumed that it was derived from Hocus, which was in turn a reduction of Hocus Pocus ( " Hocus Pocus "). Early examples of the use of the term can be found in the reporting of the Berners Street Hoax of 1810.

Manifestations

A hoax can also occur in the form of hoax or urban legend. Also, an April Fool often has the form of a hoax. It also circulate repeatedly hoaxes on the net that were spread out defamatory and seditious reasons.

So-called charity hoaxes often suggest a charitable background, claiming, for example, that a well-known company a few cents per forwarded mail is charged, creating a life-saving operation to be financed.

Also, chain letters, which are forwarded by e -mail can be counted among the hoaxes, because here there is rarely a real background that would justify disclosure. A common example of this are letters that were allegedly sent by the editors of MSN Messenger and calling on the one hand, to continue to send the mail to as many people, because the only way to be in the future a free account at, allegedly paid, secure MSN. Similar incidents are also observed in other instant messaging services such as ICQ and online networks such as Facebook or StudiVZ.

In order to achieve strong interest and participation in the Forward, the texts of the e- mail chain letters often refer to current events and thus use the so-called Lokomotiv technique that is commonly used as excitation attention in the press. In times of about, which are energy companies, especially in the public criticism, shall result in a chain -mail that calls for turning off all power consumers at a certain time of a certain day. Carrying on the train of the day's events turns so a call about at ecologically dedicated e- mail users. Often, the text asserts an organization that was behind the action, but she does not call by name or call a fictitious name.

Such an e- mail chain letter abusing the involvement of E -mail participants to produce a more or less unnecessary network load. He is therefore by no means harmless, because the network capacity must be financed, and if it is not sufficiently available, the traffic will be slowed down. Current knowledge after but spam are represented far greater in volume without a selectively excessive degradation of the data networks that is regularly visible. Excessive size have such mails usually also not, especially when compared with various fun -mails which often have about a program or presentation graphics annexed size of one megabyte or more. The effect that the hoax, just like the two other mail categories, must be read first, then evaluated and rectified in accordance with locally from the Inbox folder in the ideal case, however, is a quite noticeable temporal and spiritual burden for the recipient - in private a certain amount of leisure, commercial, however, expensive work.

Another variant is a senseless chain links. The affected sites contain very little useful information, but always a link to another page which has a similar structure. The surfers shimmy as from side to side to find without the actual information sought. A typical representative of this type of hoax is to be found in a number of blogs. Their strong internal linking ensures now that a search for the " best blonde joke ever " barely jokes, but all the more supports more blog entries to days that refer to each other.

Examples

A typical modern example is the Good Times hoax, an alleged email that erases the hard drive when opened. The warning against this "virus" spread in 1994 a million times via email and has also been published by many newspapers and trade institutions. The then supposed danger of viruses that spread via e- mail, however, was only years later reality, for example by Love Letter.

Well-known examples are also an alleged decision of the OLG Augsburg for a refund of the license fee by the GEZ and the bonsai cats or among Muslim youth that Rats girls ( Cursed Girl).

Messages to the so-called Dotwin assumed that espionage functions, information would be collected over viewers who participated in a raffle of several German television stations in the years 2001/2002.

Hoax and computer virus

During a hoax mostly just to scare, to so-called phishing fraud is by prompting the recipient of the e -mail credentials to make known, for example for online banking, e -mail or via a fake website. There are also hoaxes with " malicious routines ", for example, ask the user to delete certain files because it constitutes viruses ( for example, files Sulfnbk.exe and JDBGMGR.EXE ( teddy bears virus) ). However, since it is a necessary system file on Windows, the user damages his own system.

In a broader sense can be considered as a hoax computer virus that propagates through social engineering, not by causing the computer system, but the user for its further dissemination.