An e-mail that claims that life won’t be beautiful if you unleash a virus hidden in a Power Point attachment is a hoax. The hoax says the name of this nefarious hoax is “Life is Beautiful” and claims it will simultaneously cause you to lose everything on your computer and give the evil hacker “life … Read more
Jesus wants your soul. He also wants your hard drive. Or at least that’s what the writer of the “It Take Guts to Say Jesus” virus hoax would have readers believe. This hoax is ancient — I got my first copy back in 1998, and it’s actually the e-mail that inspired me to launch Nuketown’s … Read more
Drawing on remembered fear of the anthrax scare, an e-mail hoax is alleging that seven women have died after inhaling few perfume samples they received in the mail. I wrote the original debunking on 12/16, but updated it on 10/24 with new information from the CDC (which further debunks the hoax). Here’s the original e-mail: … Read more
In 1999/2000, an e-mail hoax surfaced claiming that a man in Hawaii died after being exposed to rat urine in the back room of a supermarket. Although it offered good advice — always wipe off your soda can before drinking from it — the content’s were false. The hoax has gained a few paragraphs since … Read more
SARS has taken a heavy toll, both in terms of human life and economic prosperity. A new e-mail hoax plays off of that malady, combining it with malease over the Iraq War in a play to get people to forward a useless e-mail around the net. The hoax alleges that British Airways, aided (as in … Read more
An e-mail allegding that an Israeli satellite took pictures of the orbiter Columbia as it exploded during re-entry is a hoax. In reality, the pictures depict a scene from the opening of the movie Armageddon, in which the shuttle is destroyed by a meteor. Here’s the text of the hoax: Date Captured: 3/17/2003 Subject:Shuttle Pictures … Read more
What’s the one thing that can get motorists’ minds off the sting of high gas prices? That’s right — the Attack of the Killer HIV Needle! An email that I first saw in the Summer of 2000 alleges that some whacko with HIV positive blood is sticking him/herself with needles, and then “affixing” these needles … Read more
Those lunatic gang initiates are at it again. They started out putting strychnine and LSD on phone booth buttons, but now they’ve moved on to slashing the ankles of unsuspecting women. They lay in wait underneath women’s cars at gas stations, and as they get out, they attack! Fortunately, just like the LSD scare, this … Read more
Not to long ago, I updated a hoax about killer South American spiders that were allegeldy infesting airplanes as well as a certain restaurant in Chicago. That very same hoax has now mutated, and shows all the signs of becoming a truly enduring urban legend. You can read about the original hoax here; to learn about … Read more
Bill Gates is a very, very rich man. Perhaps wealthier than many of us could imagine, but even with all of his money, not even Bill Gates could afford to give everyone on the net a share of his fortune. Yet that’s exactly what a hoax that’s been circulating the net for decades (well, in … Read more