Hoax or Not, Treat It the Same

Late last year, my sister forwarded to me an email that foretold of great evil and destruction should anyone open an email with a “Happy New Year” greeting for a subject. The email begged us to save the world by forwarding it to everyone we know. She wanted to know if she should believe it.
More recently I got something similar, this one warning that a deadly email will have a subject concerning President Barack Obama’s acceptance speech. This one added an air of authenticity by claiming that a popular hoax-tracking site has verified the details to be true. Hoax or not, I rarely read past the subject line of these types of emails, and I never forward them to others. Here are my reasons why:

Thousands of mass-mailing worms have been discovered, and new ones are found every day. Each one carries multiple variants of the email it sends out. I would never remember every subject and message that I need to avoid.
Verifying the veracity of a virus warning doesn’t do you any good. Say you have an email that warns you not to open an attachment if the subject is “blahblah”, and the attachment name is “blah.exe.” Then everyone declares this email a hoax, not real, nothing to worry about. Does that mean if you do receive an email that matches the description of the “hoax,” that (continue reading...)