Productivity Portfolio

Besides regular email, we often receive email from friends with compelling stories, requests for help, online petitions, or negative company news. These emails range from Congress not paying into Social Security to parents looking for lost children. Many of these are email hoaxes with ulterior motives. Every time you forward these emails without verifying the information, you contribute to the problem. You're also hurting your own reputation.

Three Web Resources to Research Hoaxes 

Usually, our first research step is to check Snopes. This site is well organized by category. Frequently, our journey ends here as the item we're researching is listed in their Top 10.

If the email appears technical and mentions a computer virus or file, we go to Symantec as they offer timely and authoritative advice. This page offers current news on security warnings and virus threats. They include a Threat Explorer feature that has a separate risk section for hoaxes and jokes.

As a last resort, we use Google to enter a unique text string from the email such as the missing child's name or the subject line from the email. Don't be surprised to find that some of these emails are variations of older themes.

Once we've determined the email is a hoax, we inform the person who sent us the email. We provide them with specific URLs and tips for doing their own research the next time around. Our experience has been that once you tell someone how to do their own research, you get fewer hoaxes.

Additional Resources