Bogus Alerts: what to look for

Before forwarding E-mail, check for signs that it is phony. It may be;

1. Unclear on how to respond or act on an issue: “Mail your friends” or “Complain to Congress” etc.
2. Unclear on details about the virus. How to avoid it, exactly what to look for, what the effects are.
3. No date to respond by for pending legislation, so the message will always be “Urgent”.
4. Very vague on who the source is. “in the news” or “Congress says” with no references to original articles or web pages.

I believe that some of this type of E-mail is used to harass a certain individual. Their name and contact information is given, maybe even a home phone number. The named individual catches the flack about the said "free prize, virus, or legislation".

Legitimate alerts should be easy to verify and act on. A good way to verify legislation is to go straight to the horse’s mouth. House and Senate bills have HR or SR as part of the bill number. Watchdog organizations, such as The Electronic Frontier Foundation, will usually have up to date information on pending E-legislation. Virus information can be obtained on-line from companies like Symantec. If you have received notice of some legislation that you are concerned with, you can find contact information and write or E-mail your representatives. Be sure to include your full name and address in E-mail.

If you are writing the original alert, listed above are good points to check before you send E-mail. You also might want to use a digital signature to sign the message. The digital signature can be used to verify that the author is in fact who it claims to be. Also, digital signatures are used to verify that the content of the signed message is unchanged, however this may become messy if greater than symbols (>) are automatically inserted into the original message as it is passed along. The software for encryption and digital signatures is available free to the public through sources like PGP.

Links in this web page may or may not be the best, most accurate, or sole source of information and are provided for example only.