How many times have you gotten an email that has "FW:FW:FW:FW:FW:FW:FW:" in the subject line? Most times these emails are cute little messages about "let's start a snowball fight" or "make a wish and forward this email to 50,000 friends and it will come true". We know those aren't email hoaxes. There are some emails, however, that litter your inbox with what the sender thought was a legitimate story. 90% of the time or so these turn out to be a hoax.

There are 2 websites in particular I'm going to share with you to help combat the plague of the email hoax. The first is Snopes, and the second is TruthOrFiction.


When you first get an email forwarded to you, sit back and think to yourself "does this seem too good or too outrageous to be true?". If it is too good to be true, it is probably a hoax. Bill Gates isn't going to give you money for forwarding this email. Just use common sense when determining if an email is a hoax or not.

If you just aren't sure if you have an email hoax on your hand or not, head on over to Snopes.com. Click in the search box at the top and type in the general topic for the email you received (Bill Gates, the name of the missing child, Bank of Nigeria, etc). Snopes has a large database of these emails and the explaination for each (whether it be true, or a hoax).

If Snopes doesn't find anything, head on over to TruthOrFiction.com. This site is similar to Snopes. It also catalogs email hoaxes and tries its best to share with you, the user, any information regarding this hoax. If the email happens to be true, you will be alerted to this fact as well.

The next question when dealing with an email hoax is what to do with the email? The obvious solution is to delete it. I prefer to take a more proactive approach, however. If I find that an email is a hoax, I will click on "Reply All" and send an email to everyone in the previous sender's email.  I will tell them something to the effect of "After researching this email, I have found that it is a hoax.  Please do not forward this email on.  For more information see this link:" and then I will paste the link from the location I found the email hoax info on.  After replying to the email hoax, I would suggest to just delete the email.

Please follow this advice and don't contribute to the mass amount of email that is being haphazardly forwarded with out any idea of whether it is an email hoax or not.

Thanks and goodnight!