Frauds and Hoaxes

hoax: An act intended to deceive or trick; trickery intended to gain an advantage
fraud: A criminal act that is a hoax deliberately intended to harm a victim or to obtain money or other valuables from the victim by deceptive means.

NOTE: There are many, many new frauds and hoaxes every week. I am not trying to catalogue them all. In these Web pages, I merely describe those that have been attempted against me or against those who have sought my personal opinion. You will also find guidance on identifying hoaxes.

Resources

These links provide information about fraud and how to file complaints against those who commit this crime:

National Fraud Information Center, established in 1992 by the National Consumers League. This organization provides advice and referrals for dealing with telemarketing and Internet fraud.

Federal Trade Commission enforces federal anti-fraud laws, both criminal and civil.

Internet Crime Complaint Center, an agency of the U.S. Department of Justice, investigates complaints about fraud, both domestic and foreign.

These links provide authoritative information about computer viruses and other security vulnerabilities:

CERT Coordination Center at Carnegie Mellon University

U. S. Department of Energy's Incident Management Program (DOE-CIRC)

U. S. Department of Homeland Security's United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT)

FIRST (Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams).

The following links describe virus hoaxes and how to detect them:

Symantec AntiVirus Research Center's Virus Hoaxes

Vmyths.com, "Truth about virus myths & hoaxes"

Hoax Busters focuses on hoaxes spread through E-mail chain letters, including hoaxes about computer viruses.

And these links describe and analyze urban legends:

Urban Legends Reference Pages (also known as Snopes.com)

Andrew Warinner's Urban Legends

Internet ScamBusters, "The #1 Publication on Internet Fraud" (fraud being a criminal form of hoax)

The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, which deals with "bad" science and anti-scientific assertions, including hoaxes about the paranormal (previously the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP))

Last updated

Since 31 May 2001, this Frauds and Hoaxes site (and its predecessor) had visitors.

Frauds and Hoaxes

Copyright © 2002-2005, 2008, 2010, 2012 by David E. Ross

Resources