Urban Legends

One of the earliest phenomena of widespread e-mail access was the mass e-mailing of stories warning the reader about some great injustice, funny story, or a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The e-mails would get forwarded to hundreds of people who would also forward them, and within a day or two the story would race across the world.

Urban legends have always existed, even before e-mail. But, with the ease of communicating to tens or even hundreds of people with the push of a button, these stories really came into their own during the Internet age.

So, what does this have to do with security? Well, it is our contention that peoples' tendency to forward these stories on to everyone in their address book was an early indication that people were more gullible in cyberspace than in the real world. It was the "crack in the door," so to speak, that many of the scammers walked in through.

In addition to that, people who forward these e-mails look a bit foolish, so it is always a good idea to spend at least a little time fact checking before you click the Send button.

One of the best places to verify whether that e-mail you just received is true is http://www.snopes.com. This site has an encyclopedic listing of urban legends with descriptions of the stories and verification of whether the story is true (or whether the story is unverified). One of the best things they do at this site is debunk fake news stories that have a real but unrelated photo associated with them (typically someone makes up a story around a photo and it gets forwarded as news). The folks who contribute to the Snopes site are also good at identifying photos that have been altered with a photo editor.