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Re: Kelsey Brooke Jones message is no longer relevant



Sorry Folks,

The message which you just received, which was kindly passed along with honest
intent , concerning Kelsey Brooke Jones is no longer relevant.  The child was
missing for only a few hours, therefore, forwarding is no longer a service.
Read attached newspaper story about this message and others which take on a life
of their own.

Rob Hamilton, Archivist
robh@woodbridge.com

PERSONAL TECH column.
SIFTING OUT THE E-HOAXES REPLYING TO THIS E-MAIL WILL HELP END
WORLD HUNGER. A LITTLE GIRL WILL GET 3 CENTS FOR CANCER
TREATMENT FOR EACH PERSON WHO RECEIVES AN E-MAIL. OPENING A
MESSAGE THAT SAYS 'HAPPY BIRTHDAY' WILL CAUSE YOUR COMPUTER TO
COMMIT HARI-KARI.

DAN HANSON and BOB COPPEDGE

The Plain Dealer Cleveland, OH
FINAL / ALL
04/10/2000, Page 6C
(Copyright (c) The Plain Dealer 2000)

Bill Gates will send you $1,000 for replying to this e-mail message. Tell all
your friends so they can
get rich too.

A boy in England suffering from leukemia wants to appear in the Guinness Book of
World Records
for getting the most e-mail. Please send him a note.

Reply to this message to get the secret Mrs. Fields cookie recipe from a
disgruntled former
employee.

We have a plan to ensure world peace. Send us $100 to help.

Sound familiar? Pranks, cons and those false but plausible stories called urban
legends have been
around for ages. E-mail has picked up the pace at which they spread from person
to person and has
produced its own categories of phony stories.

People are often eager to believe these tales. They may be entertaining, or they
may tug on the heart
strings. And they're often reported as having really happened - to a friend of
the storyteller's cousin
or some other vague friend or relation.

Mostly, false messages are accepted because they offer information that is
either presumed to be
true or that many people want to believe is true.

What makes people want to believe? Greed helps.

For example, you're probably aware of the recent mega-merger between America
Online and Time
Warner. So when an e-mail message shows up saying "Due to this merger an
unprecedented
opportunity has arisen," you may be gullible. You know that the merger is true,
and you'd sure like to
get something out of it for yourself.

Most urban legends are pretty harmless, but there are malicious messages. Some
deliberately
present false information in an attempt to get your money or otherwise hurt you;
others may trick you
into launching viruses that will damage your computer.

Take one e-mail making the rounds. It says Bill Gates will give you money if you
forward the e-mail
to enough people. Maybe you have your doubts, but you figure it couldn't hurt to
send the message
to 10 friends - just in case.

What you don't realize is that the addresses of those friends also end up
getting collected by a
company that sells them to mailing- list brokers. Your friends soon get flooded
with junk e-mail.

The original sender can use various techniques (setting the e- mail to send
"blind" carbon copies,
hidden coding, etc.) to capture the entire list. Another trick is to have an
"unsubscribe option." Once
you reply, the sender knows he has a legitimate address to sell.

How can you protect yourself? Remember that whatever an e-mail message says,
whatever sources
it claims, you're at the mercy of the person who sent you the message and the
person who typed it in
the first place.

The same goes for Web sites. Anyone can post a lie on a Web page; being on the
Internet doesn't
make it true.

If you're considering responding to an unsolicited message - particularly one
that asks for money -
always check with legitimate authorities first. Does the e-mail say some child
in Denver needs help?
If the message lists contact information, be sure to check it out. If there is
no contact information
provided, be skeptical.

Of course, the message about ensuring world peace by sending $100 to Dan and Bob
is true.
Forward that to everyone you know.

Missing child

The story: The parents of Kelsey Brooke Jones have sent out this photo of their
young daughter,
missing from her Minnesota home.

The trick: Another appeal to the heart, and it seems so helpful to pass this
plea on to all of your
friends.

The truth: Authorities from Missing Children Minnesota confirm that the girl was
missing - for less
than two hours.

Her parents apparently never sent out a follow-up message, or if they did it
couldn't catch up with all
the copies of the original, which are still being forwarded.

Many similar cases exist, and undoubtedly some parents of missing children are
using e-mail to
spread the word.

But before you send the message to your friends, check the e-mail out. Does it
have contact
information for the local authorities that you can check?

A quick search on the Internet shows many sites run by local governments and
others with lists of
confirmed missing people. These efforts are now well-organized; check with the
National Center for
Missing and Exploited Children at

http://www.ncmec.org/

or call 1-800-843-5678.

Free Disney vacation

The story: A message from Walt Disney Jr. tells you that his company is
partnering with Microsoft to
test some software. If the message is forwarded to enough people (13,000 in the
message we've
seen), you will receive either $5,000 or a free trip to Orlando.

The tricks: It lists names you've heard of - Disney, Microsoft. It has a sense
of urgency, and it plays
on greed.

The truth: Walt Disney never had a son. It becomes even less believable from
there. Software
companies have very rigid procedures for their beta test process and rarely, if
ever, would solicit
candidates from the general public for a test.

Appeal from Jessica Mydek

The story: Jessica - or some other name - is a child with a major health
problem. Businesses have
agreed to donate 3 cents to the American Cancer Society and other sponsors every
time the e-mail
is forwarded.

The trick: An appeal to the heart, and the idea that sending an e- mail doesn't
cost anything so
there's no harm in trying.

The truth: There never was a Jessica Mydek (it's a made-up name mimicking a
crude slang term,
which may be part of the creator's thrill). Similar appeals use different names.
Sometimes the
companies supposedly involved are named, sometimes they're anonymous, and the
donation amount
can vary.

5 cents surcharge on e-mail

The story: Congress is going to impose a tax on e-mail if you don't act now!
Click to send in your
protest! The message refers to Bill 602P, and often a lawyer named Richard
Stepp.

The trick: Outrage at politicians is a powerful emotion, particularly when
they're accused of going
after your money. Plus it doesn't take much effort to participate by firing off
an angry message and
forwarding the original complaint to your friends.

The truth: No such bill, no such lawyer. There have been some attempts to change
the way calls to
Internet service providers are billed. But all those attempts, through the
Federal Communications
Commission, have failed.

This is different from the issue of sales tax on purchases made over the
Internet, which is being
batted around in Washington.

Food for surfing

The story: Want to help cure world hunger? Just click here, and companies will
donate money.

The trick: Another variation of the sick child appeal.

The truth: This one could be true, if it points you to a site that has the
support of companies including
Sprint and ProFlowers:

http://www.thehungersite.com

The promise is that clicking a button will generate a donation to the United
Nations World Food
Program. (Advertisers normally would pay a fee for space on a Web page.
Companies that
advertise on this site pay the fee directly to the food program.)

Before you believe similar appeals, investigate the legitimacy of the site
yourself. One easy way is to
click on the link to a sponsor. Sprint's link on The Hunger Site, for example,
takes you to its
corporate Web site, which has more information on the sponsorship. If all the
links on a site are to
other pages on the same site (the addresses all start with the same words, like
a link from

www.phonyphony.com

going to

www.phonyphony.com/sprint),

send an e-mail to one of the supposed sponsors (check a search engine like Yahoo
to find its home
page) asking for confirmation.

Needle in the ball pit

The story: A 3-year-old boy from Texas, Kevin Archer, was playing in the ball
pit at a McDonald's
after lunch with his mother. Kevin complained that he was hurt but his mother
could find nothing
wrong.

Later that night, he went into convulsions and died. A doctor found a broken-off
hypodermic needle
with heroin stuck in his skin.

The trick: It plays on the fears of most parents about what could happen to
their children, as well as
worries about the dangers of the modern world. Variations on this story include
snakes in a Burger
King play area and razor blades on a theme park's water slide.

The truth: There is no Kevin Archer; there were no medical cases like this in
Texas. McDonald's
released a statement reporting that "there have been no such incidents ever
reported at any
McDonald's." In addition, "There has never been an article in any newspaper
regarding the rumor."

Experts suggest that stories like this are often started by people who have had
some kind of scare
themselves, however mild, and want to make sure others are on their guard.

Virus warnings

The story: Look out! If you open an e-mail entitled "Happy Birthday," your hard
drive will crash;
your financial information will be shared with the entire population of Canada,
and you will be
forever labeled as a John Tesh groupie. All because of a nasty computer virus
embedded in the
message.

The trick: Computer viruses do exist, so you know this could be true. And we've
all heard about
what they can do to our computers, so this plays to our fears.

The truth: This one's tough. There are viruses, and some of them are slipped
into e-mail messages
that have deceptive titles.

But some of these warnings are phony warnings, and if you keep bombarding your
friends by
sending on every warning ... you may not have as many friends anymore.

It gets back to anti-virus basics. Buy software that tracks and removes viruses,
and go to the
software's Web site for frequent updates. Don't open files sent to you by
strangers that have an
".exe" on the end of the name.

Nowadays, executable files can be hidden in Web pages or other code, such as a
Microsoft Word
document, and Macintosh computers can be as vulnerable as others.

Check the veracity of warnings by looking at the list of fake announcements at

http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html

DRAWING by DORA STANEFF-CLINE / PLAIN DEALER ARTIST

Copyright
© 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.