It's a scam!

They say both phony virus alerts, money making schemes and chain letters are classified (in America, everything is classified) as hoaxes, and if they're not created to rob you of your money, they will have the objective of generating an unusually high volume of e-mail traffic, which crashes your company's server and brings the whole system to a grinding halt. When it happens where I work, all the editorial people go out for coffee and the technical people go into a toestand.

How many times have you received the mail, supposedly from Bill Gates, with this message: "Here at Microsoft we have just compiled an e-mail tracing program that tracks everyone to whom this message is forwarded to. It does this through a unique IP (Internet Protocol) address log book database. Forward this to everyone you know and if it reaches 1000 people everyone on the list will receive $1000." And how many of you have forwarded it, just in case?

Others still, and they're streaming non-stop out of Nigeria and referred to as 419 scams, are specifically created to relieve you of your money. Like the one from "Prince Musarrat of Nigeria" who desperately needs your bank account details so he can transfer his dying dad's millions into it (or something along those lines). They're getting more sophisticated by the minute, and are hugely successful - believe it or not.

Then there is the prayer list for a missing girl in Minnesota, the win a cellphone if you forward this mail hoax, or the Good Times hoax which says that "... if the program is not stopped, the computer's processor will be placed in an nth-complexity infinite binary loop which can severely damage the processor...." Not only is this pure gibberish, it has been known to fool even hardened IT journalists...

Fun and time-wasting as email hoaxes and viruses are - (and downright irritating if it's one of those good-luck mails that you have to forward to 10 friends within 30 minutes in case your luck runs out, and the friend who sent it to you has already copied all your friends in) they can and do cause damage, waste valuable time and can ruin your reputation as a sassed cookie if you fall for and forward them.

So before you next hit the send button, check an email for telltale hoax or scam signs like:

I am the daughter of the late Minister of Foreign Affairs and have been living in exile in Burundi. I need your bank account details for a transfer...

Congratulations you won the this that or the other lottery, but due to a mishap with numbers we need your account details...

Look for the phrase 'Forward this to everyone you know'

Look for statements like 'This is not a hoax'

Look for overly emphatic language, the frequent use of UPPERCASE LETTERS and multiple exclamation points!!!!!!!

If the message seems geared more to persuade than to inform, be suspicious. Hoaxers are out to push emotional buttons.

If the message purports to give you extremely important information that you've never heard of before or seen elsewhere in legitimate venues, be suspicious.

And a final word, always be wary of health scares and hoaxes, such as the one that warns that underarm deodorant causes cancer, that there's asbestos in Tampons, and the various needle stick hoaxes. One that we recently received here at w24, and that I've had a number of mails about, is the, now old, Canola Oil hoax. Sure, the distributor thought she was doing good by warning us all about the evils of Canola oil, but if she'd checked the facts first, she would have simply deleted it.