Health Related Hoaxes and Rumors
Medical hoaxes and urban legends are becoming so common on the Internet that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) created a special Web site to counter them. (www.cdc.gov/hoax_rumors.htm)
Hoaxbusters
Computer Incident Advisory Capability (CIAC) has been providing the U.S. Department of Energy with incident response, reporting, and tracking, along with other computer security support since 1989. CIAC provides leading edge cyber security solutions for the nation. Through its strategic alliances, CIAC is the recognized focal point for the DOE/NNSA and other national stakeholders. CIAC responds quickly with personalized solutions employing our trusted relationships and technical competency.
Interspersed among the junk mail and spam that fills our Internet e-mail boxes are dire warnings about devastating new viruses, Trojans that eat the heart out of your system, and malicious software that can steal the computer right off your desk. Added to that are messages about free money, children in trouble, and other items designed to grab you and get you to forward the message to everyone you know. Most all of these messages are hoaxes or chain letters. While hoaxes do not automatically infect systems like a virus or Trojan, they are still time consuming and costly to remove from all the systems where they exist. At CIAC, we find that we spend much more time de-bunking hoaxes than handling real virus and Trojan incidents. These pages describe some of the warnings, offers, and pleas for help that are filling our mailboxes, clogging our mailservers, and that generally do not have any basis in fact. (http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org/)
Urban Legend Zeitgeist
The newsgroup alt.folklore.urban (AFU) is devoted to the discussion and debunking of urban legends and other related issues. This is the Introduction to the Web version of the Frequently Asked Questions/ Frequently Posted Legends list for AFU. (http://www.urbanlegends.com/ulz/)
How Urban Legends Work
Internet Viruses, Virus Hoaxes, and Urban Legends