Virus hoaxes

By now, many of us have become familiar enough with spam and chain emails that we instantly recognize anything our filters don't catch, and we promptly trash it. For those less familiar with the pattern by which we can recognize more harmful emails -- some with viruses or links to phishing sites -- Snopes.com is an excellent investment of your time. Many of the scams being run on the Web are as old as time, but come in newer forms less recognizable to the unseasoned Web surfer. To complicate matters, some of the warnings you'll receive over email about some new internet virus are complete hoaxes written by someone with too much time on their hands. Snopes.com investigates the most common of these and differentiates between the real hazards, the fakes, and the wrongly accused. Next time you get an email claiming, for instance, that the FDIC has failed, head over to Snopes.com before believing it, and always check your address bar against what you know is the correct web address before logging into familiar Web sites like Facebook.