What Is Email Hoax?

The world is full of scams. Yet the one you've never heard of, the one that makes you think twice about opening your email, is the email hoax. An email hoax is a rip-off. This is allotted in email form. It is designed to mislead and defraud email recipients, frequently for economic gain. Hoax is derived from hocus. A period first used within the overdue 18th century. What's worse than someone trying to steal your money? Someone is trying to steal your identity! That's exactly what an email hoax does: it attempts to get you to give away sensitive information so they can take over your life (and bank account). Email hoaxes are a common Internet scam tactic targeted to specified demographics, markets or causes. Email hoaxes are usually used to trick people into giving money to charities they think they're helping, such as missing children. Nigerian scams are another famous email hoax criminals use to trick people into sending money. Lottery scams look like official emails from legitimate lottery organizations and tell people they've won millions of dollars. They ask for personal information to claim their prize and then steal those personal details from their victims. Dating scams can look like an email from someone who says they've been looking at your profile on an online dating website and wants to get in touch with you for a date. They ask for your real name, address and phone number, which may be used later for identity theft or other crime. Chain letters usually appear as emails with instructions telling you what to do next. After someone sends out the chain letter, it's expected that each person will send back an email asking for more information about the sender (such as why they sent this message). This practice has been around since at least the 1940s. The best way to protect yourself against an email hoax is simple: REMEMBER TO OPEN EMAILS IF YOU DON'T KNOW THE SENDER! If anything looks suspicious or unfamiliar, don't click on it!