Scams, hoaxes and cookies

1. What is a Hoax or scam?

A Hoax is an act of deception; it is designed to trick people into doing something they might normally wouldn’t do or accepting something as genuine knowledge. Their initial intent was for use of practical jokes through the use of the internet, but like so many things it quickly evolved into something greater. Today the most common use for a Hoax is to rip people off or even stealing their entire identity. But even although a lot of Hoaxes are harmful in many ways, there are also a few hoaxes that are intended in doing the exact opposite of harming the receiver, they try to sensibilities the receiver in certain dangers or try to make sure that certain social situations are known to a broad public. A lot of these modern day hoaxes are most of the time send by e-mail, usually filled to the brim with pictures and flashy pieces of text, yet when the people click on anything they see the truth behind it (this is only with the hoaxes that are intended as practical jokes). The harmful hoaxes don’t have this mechanism and are solely used for personal gain and or financial accounts.

As scam is roughly the same as a harmful hoax, only the scam produces more legitimate sources and is more professional. They look in fact so real that most people wouldn’t see the difference between a general commercial and a scam. A scam is only used for financial or personal gain, they generally don’t ask for your personal information or bank accounts.

1.1. A few examples of hoaxes and scams:

Some of you might have come across a few scams yourself already. They are sent to almost everybody who has an e-mail account. A few of these scams and hoaxes are:

• The chainmail
• A mail from an unknown person who claims to know you
• An commercial for an unknown product
• Personal information request
• A free product give-away in replacement of an old or expired product

Most chainmail’s: are pretty innocent, they usually just ask you to send the e-mail to other people in exchange for a girlfriend, the happiest day of your life,…. Some actually trick people into pressing alt F4 which turns of your pc.

A mail from an unknown person who claims to know you actually is a virus in disguise: never open them for when you click them you haul in the virus.

An commercial for an unknown product: It could also be a virus but most of the time it’s a trick to get a lot of money from an unknowing person who thinks he/she really will get something in return.

Personal information requests: are imposters who will ask for your personal data. Data that might be requested ranges from Bank accounts to identities to even just usernames and passwords.

A free product give-away in replacement of an old or expired product: also send a virus when opened by the receiver.

2. What can you do to counter hoaxes and scams?

It is not hard to check if the mail that has been send is a real ad or a scam/hoax, a few things you could do are:

• Check the company out by typing the name into the googlesearchbar and check the site out
• Don’t give away your information to anybody, unless you are sure that person is to be trusted (so in general to someone you know really well) and if you still         need to send the information, send it through a live chat room, not through e-mail.
•  DO NOT reply to any e-mails asking for personal information.
• Read the e-mails carefully, they usually contain a hint to the fact that it is real or fake (most of the time in the small letters).
• Lotteries from a foreign country are, most of the time, scams or hoaxes too.

There are a few programs that scan the e-mails to check if they are real or not. Although you shouldn’t rely on them and it is hard to find one that is good or not a virus itself.

The best method to counter hoaxes and scams is still to clear those e-mails and close the messages immediately. Delete all e-mails from people you do not know. If you get an e-mail from a friend with a weird title or a different writing style ask those people if the send that e-mail. And never ever send the e-mail to someone else! We cannot stress this enough. This way the scam/hoax just continuous on, and this way the creator of the hoax or scam doesn’t have to do anything to continue stealing information from people.

A lot of antivirus systems also help protect you from these hoaxes, although the creators of these hoaxes are always developing new methods of getting around these antivirus systems.

3. What are the dangers of a scam and or hoax?

There are a lot of dangers from these hoaxes and scams, going from small things like a password from a site you use (YouTube, Facebook,….) to things of personal value or great importance (pin-codes, Id,….). The biggest problem about the hoaxes and scams are that you never know what the hoax or scam steals from you.

The creators of these hoaxes and scams are sending so many viruses these days that people are starting to ignore these alerts, most of the viruses from hoaxes and scams are still small but these people will also not notice when larger and more dangerous than those smaller previous viruses.

4. Cookies, what are they and what do they do?

Cookie, it’s a message given to a web browser by the web server. The browser stores the message in a text file. The message is send back to the server each time you visit the site, the browser will send the text file back.

There are 2 kinds of cookies, the session cookies and the persistent cookies.

A session cookie (also called a transient cookie): a cookie that is erased when the user closes his web browser. The cookie is in the temporary memory of the browser and does not save when the browser closes. These cookies are safe, they don’t collect information from the user his computer. They will store information in the form of a session identification that doesn’t personally identify you.

A persistent cookie (also called a permanent cookie or stored cookie): a cookie that is stored on the user’s hard drive, these expire after a time that’s set in the cookie file, or when the user deletes the file. They are made to collect identifying information about the user (web surfing behavior or user preferences, …). The persistent cookies carry personal information and are more dangerous than the session cookies.

5. The danger from cookies.

There are 2 cookies, first-party and third-party. First-party cookies are placed on your computer by
the website that you visit; they are generally used by the websites you visit to identify your computer, especially on return visits to the same site. Third-party cookies, the most problematic of the two types, are placed on your computer by a party other than the website you are visiting–for instance, a third-party advertising company that wants to keep track of where you shop and what you buy. Third-party cookies are the primary source for online identity theft through cookies.

Also Third-party cookies can track all the websites you visit every time. They can contain any of the information you enter on any website. Because of that these cookies not only have information about which sites you visit, but they might also contain user name, password and bank or credit card account information. Cookie thieves or cookie hijackers tap into the cookie files and steal the information.

6. How can I prevent cookies from saving on my computer?

You can disable cookies in various web browsers, but this is not always the best thing to do. Some websites need those cookies to function, also the first-party cookies are not dangerous.
Another thing you can do is delete the cookies on your hard disk. And don’t give sites  personal information, the site can’t save the personal information in the cookie. If you don’t trust the website than just don’t fill anything in on the website.

If you want to delete your cookies.

For Windows Me, Windows 98, Windows NT or Windows 95 then cookie folder is in one of these locations:
C:\Windows\Cookies\
C:\Windows\Profiles\<username>\Cookies…
If you have Windows XP or Windows 2000 then cookie folder is in this location (note that on your PC it can be on other drive instead of drive C):
C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Cookies\
Please be careful some “cookies” are no cookies and Windows and Internet explorer use them all the time, deleting those can make problems in IE and Windows.