Hoax
As Hoax ([ hɔʊ̯ks ] English [ həʊks ], US-American [ hoʊks ];. English for Jux, joke , jokes, and dizziness ) one is now mostly false report referred to in books, magazines or newspapers, by e-mail , Instant messenger or other means (e.g. SMS , MMS or social networks ), believed to be true by many and therefore passed on to friends, colleagues, relatives and other people.
Word meaning
The word hoax is first used in 1796. Its origin is not clearly proven, but it is assumed that it was derived from Hocus , which in turn was an abbreviation of Hocus Pocus (" hocus-pocus "). Early examples of the use of the term can be found in the coverage of the Berners Street Hoax of 1810.
Manifestations
A hoax can also appear in the form of the newspaper duck or as an urban legend . Even an April Fool's joke often takes the form of a hoax. There are also hoaxes circulating on the net that were spread for defamatory and seditious reasons.
So-called charity hoaxes often suggest a charitable background and claim, for example, that a well-known corporation pays a few cents for each email forwarded, which is intended to finance a life-saving operation.
Also, chain letters forwarded by e-mail can be counted among the hoaxes, because here rarely is there a real background that would justify disclosure. A common example of this are letters that are said to have been sent by the editors of MSN Messenger and that ask you to forward the mail to as many people as possible, because this is the only way to secure a free account with - allegedly chargeable - MSN in the future. Similar incidents are also observed with other instant messaging services and with online networks such as Facebook .
Another variant are meaningless chain links. The websites concerned contain hardly any usable information, but always a link to another page with a similar structure. The surfers shimmy from side to side without finding the information they are actually looking for. A typical representative of this type of hoax can be found in a number of blogs . Their strong internal links mean that a search for the “best blonde joke of all time” hardly ever brings up jokes, but brings up more blog entries that refer to each other.
Examples
Coronavirus Since March 2020, pseudoscientific or misleading chain letters have been circulating on WhatsApp and social media in particular with dubious "tips" on how to test yourself for the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus and avoid infection, and which end with the following sentence : "Please send this information to your family, your friends and everyone you know." Nobody should do this, as it is essentially pure disinformation. Bavaria's Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann warns:
„Cyberkriminelle missbrauchen die Angst vor dem Corona-Virus: Die Kriminellen nutzen das Informationsbedürfnis der Bevölkerung schamlos aus, um daraus Profit zu schlagen.“ So beobachtet die Polizei laut Herrmann einen Anstieg der Verbreitung von E-Mails mit potentiell schadhaften Anhängen im Namen von Gesundheitsämtern oder gar der Weltgesundheitsorganisation (WHO). „In gefälschten E-Mails der angeblichen Behörde oder Institution, aber auch zum Beispiel versteckt in vermeintlichen Angeboten für Atemschutzmasken werden potentiell schadhafte Anhänge in den Formaten .docx oder .exe versteckt. Beim Anklicken können dann Daten ausgespäht oder sogar der Computer verschlüsselt werden“, so Herrmann.
Corona dangers online, on the phone and on the doorstep: The spread of the corona virus is worrying many people. Fraudsters take advantage of this. The police are reporting on several cases throughout Germany in which criminals presented themselves as alleged corona testers and as alleged doctors or employees of the health department or presented themselves as infected relatives.
Sheer nonsense: The "confused" or completely unfounded conspiracy theory with nonsensical insinuation and "irresponsible" trivialization of the 2020 corona pandemic by the former MP and board member of Transparency International Wolfgang Wodarg is also dangerous, according to the renowned health expert and epidemiologist Prof. Dr. Karl Lauterbach on YouTube. These scientifically absurd theories by Wodarg have been widely criticized by WHO, RKI and Charité experts as well as by scientists, virologists and the media.
Anyone can easily report dubious content and false reports about the new corona virus via the new crowd newsroom. A team from the non-profit, foundation-financed research center Correctiv sifts through the submissions, evaluates them and, if necessary, publishes a fact check or via a newsletter. In the longer term, Correctiv employees also want to find out which channels are most susceptible to false reports, how exactly they spread - and to trace where they actually come from.
Harmless than the flu? Devious theories about SARS-CoV-2, even by supposedly serious scientists, are causing confusion, who consider the measures decided to contain the virus to be wrong and exaggerated and even claim that the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 is not dangerous at all. In chains of arguments that sound convincing to laypeople, they consistently deny the current state of science.
When it comes to treatment and prevention, the number of unsubstantiated theories is almost infinite, from alcohol to onions. The corona conspiracy theorists sometimes believe in quite bizarre backgrounds to the pandemic. Some of this seems no less absurd than theories that the earth is flat or hollow. The flood of false information is so great that the United Nations warned of a "fake news epidemic" back in March. The federal government and the federal research ministry were evidently forced to publish their own website with fact checks.
A typical hoax example is the Good Times hoax, an alleged email that deletes the hard drive when it is opened. The warning about this "virus" spread millions of times in 1994 via e-mail and was also published by many newspapers and specialist institutions. The alleged danger at the time from viruses that spread via e-mail only became a reality years later, for example through Loveletter .
Well-known examples are also an alleged decision, which has been circulating since 1999, by the Augsburg Higher Regional Court, which has no longer existed since 1932, to reimburse broadcasting fees from the GEZ, as well as the bonsai cats or the cursed girl among Muslim youth .
Reports on the so-called Dotwin placed it under espionage functions, whereby information would be collected about viewers who took part in a competition of various German television stations in 2001/2002.
Hoax and computer virus
While a hoax is usually only intended to frighten you, so-called phishing is suitable for fraud, in which it asks the recipient of the e-mail to disclose login data, for example for online banking , by e-mail or via a fake website. There are also hoaxes with "malicious routines" that z. B. request the user to delete certain files because they are viruses (for example the files SULFNBK.EXEand JDBGMGR.EXE, see also teddy bear virus ). However, since it is a necessary system file under Windows , the user damages his own system.
In a broader sense, a hoax can also be viewed as a computer virus that propagates through social engineering by not causing the computer system but the user to spread it.
See also
Web links
- Hoax info service. About computer viruses that are not viruses (so-called "hoaxes") and other false reports and rumors . Editor: Frank Ziemann. In: IT Service Center of the TU Berlin (tubIT). Constantly updated list of hoaxes in circulation.
- Hoaxes . In: Sagen.at . Hoax collection with a focus on hoaxes of the "pre-digital age".
- Hendrik Ternieden: Decade of Hoaxing. Incredible, but wrong. In: Spiegel Online . December 17, 2009, accessed October 27, 2019 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Annika Kremer (onlinefacts.de): What is a hoax? In: SAT.1 Advice: Security on the Internet. December 16, 2015, accessed October 27, 2019 .
- ↑ Holger Dambeck: Bloggers celebrate "the best blonde joke of all time". In: Spiegel Online . January 4, 2006, accessed October 27, 2019 .
- ↑ Hoax about the coronavirus 2020
- ↑ Fact check on the chain letter
- ↑ BayStMI: PM 98/2020 of March 18, 2020
- ↑ MDR news of March 19, 2020
- ↑ LKA Lower Saxony from March 19, 2020
- ^ TAZ of March 19, 2020
- ↑ Lauterbach, March 18, 2020
- ↑ Der Spiegel (Wissenschaft of March 20, 2020), fact check: "The dangerous misinformation of Wolfgang Wodarg"
- ↑ Süddeutsche from March 27, 2020
- ↑ Newsroom on false reports about Sars-CoV-2
- ↑ Fact check focus: Coronavirus
- ↑ Visit from March 31, 2020: Fake news about Sars-CoV-2
- ↑ n-tv of April 25, 2020
- ↑ Federal Government of April 23, 2020
- ↑ Federal Ministry of Education and Research of April 20, 2020