What Are Hoax Emails?
What Are Hoax Emails?Answer: Hoax emails are also knows as ‘spoof’ emails, meaning ‘falsified’. A hoaxed/spoofed email is when the sender purposely alters parts of the email to masquerade as though it was authored by someone else. Commonly, the sender’s name/address and the body of the message are formatted to appear from a legitimate source, as though the email came from a bank or a newspaper or legitimate company on the Web. Sometimes, the spoofer will make the email appear to come from a private citizen somewhere. In more benign cases of email hoaxes, these spoofed messages are used to spread urban myths and preposterous stories (e.g. Mel Gibson was horrifically burned as a teenager). In other more malevolent cases, the spoofed email is part of a phishing (con man) attack. In other cases, a spoofed email is used to dishonestly market an online service or sell you a bogus product
