tell [employees] I don’t want them to get personal e-mails.” If a hoax should slip through, Stovall tells them, “Don’t pass it on; ignore it. If you don’t read it, you don’t get involved with it.”
The Risk & Cost of Hoaxes
Protect Your Company From E-mail Hoaxes
By the sixth generation, there are a million e-mail messages being processed by our mail servers. The capacity to handle these messages must be paid for by the users or, if it is not paid for, the mail servers slow down to a crawl or crash. Note that this example only forwards the message to 10 people at each generation; people who forward real hoax messages often send them to many times that number.
Though some e-mail hoaxes might seem genuine, they nevertheless can cost your business real dollars in lost productivity. Make sure employees follow these tips and hints:
Don’t pass on a hoax or suspected hoax. If you are concerned, investigate the e-mail without passing on the letter.
Real computer viruses are listed at antivirus sites such as Symantec (www.symantec.com).
Congressional bills have numbers, which can be found at Thomas (http://thomas.loc.gov), and bills considered by your state legislature are listed on your state’s Web page or in public records.
Rule changes at a government agency are usually posted at the agency’s Website, as well as notices of hoaxes relating to them.
See more hoaxes at TruthOrFiction.com (www.truthorfiction .com) and at Snopes.com (www.snopes.com).
SOURCE: THE COMPUTER INCIDENT ADVISORY CAPABILITY HOAXBUSTERS WEBSITE(HTTP://HOAXBUSTERS.CLAC.ORG).