Category: Hoax Debunkings

An hoax e-mail circulating since well before the November 2004 elections claims that congressmen sweet pension deal means they don’t have to pay into Social Security. Here’s the hoax I collected back before the election (and have only just now[…]

An old e-mail hoax featuring the Budweiser Frogs has recently re-surfaced with a slightly re-tooled message of digital destruction. The original version of the e-mail, which I last remember seeing when the Budweiser Frogs were still popular (about 1999) just[…]

A tragedy-filled, tear-jerking e-mail claims you’re a heartless if you don’t forward an e-mail that will net a distraught mother .12 cents from AOL for every person you send it to. But if you do forward it, what you’ll be[…]

An e-mail that claims that life won’t be beautiful if you unleash a virus hidden in a Power Point attachment is a hoax. The hoax says the name of this nefarious hoax is “Life is Beautiful” and claims it will[…]

Drawing on remembered fear of the anthrax scare, an e-mail hoax is alleging that seven women have died after inhaling few perfume samples they received in the mail. I wrote the original debunking on 12/16, but updated it on 10/24[…]

SARS has taken a heavy toll, both in terms of human life and economic prosperity. A new e-mail hoax plays off of that malady, combining it with malease over the Iraq War in a play to get people to forward[…]

An e-mail allegding that an Israeli satellite took pictures of the orbiter Columbia as it exploded during re-entry is a hoax. In reality, the pictures depict a scene from the opening of the movie Armageddon, in which the shuttle is[…]

What’s the one thing that can get motorists’ minds off the sting of high gas prices? That’s right — the Attack of the Killer HIV Needle! An email that I first saw in the Summer of 2000 alleges that some[…]