Belinda wants to know some good sites to help her check on virus hoaxes
I want you to know that I depend on Cloudeight for all my e-mail/Windows needs and knowledge and I think you do a FANTASTIC JOB!! KEEP IT UP!!

Secondly, I never open e-mails from people/companies that I either don't know or subscribe to. I delete them quick as a wink.

I'm writing tonight to ask your advice on a reliable website to check out all these virus e-mail alerts that keep arriving in my e-mail box from well meaning friends. I have gone to a few sites and hope they are correct. With you long lasting experience of software and websites, I was hoping you could direct me to a respectable site that I won't have any qualms on believing.

Our Answer
There are several web sites you can use to check to see if something is a hoax or scam. One thing we want to say before we list some sites we want to tell you that most everything that is sent by friends to their friends to their friends and so on, are almost always scams or hoaxes.

First, you can always use Google to check out a hoax or scam. It's likely that the scam or hoax is either an old one just making the rounds again or it's a variation of an old one. Most scams and hoaxes have a name or key word you can search in Google. You'll get better results if you type in the name of the scam or hoax then use a + sign and "Hoax" or "Scam" after it. For example "School Days+Scam" (leave the quotes off).

Snopes.com - This probably the most well-known of all sites that offers valuable and mostly accurate information about a huge number of scams, rip-off, virus and other hoaxes. A great resource. If you get a lot of hoax and scam emails from friends, you might want to bookmark Snopes and have your friends check out what they forward before they forward it. Educating people is s good way to stop these hoaxes and scams from circulating and recalculating endlessly.

You can find Snopes at http://www.snopes.com/snopes.asp .

Truth Or Fiction - This site deals with Internet rumors, email scams, some email hoaxes and other misinformation that is generally spread by email or Web sites. A great resource and one of our favorites.

You can find Truth or Fiction at http://www.truthorfiction.com/ .

FBI - Believe it or not, the U.S. Government runs a pretty good email anti-scam site that will help you detect scam emails and also give you a heads-up on what to be on the lookout for in the future. It's fairly well updated and full of information you might find useful.

FBI Cyber Investigations- Email Scams site  http://www.fbi.gov/cyberinvest/escams.htm .

Of course there are many other sites on the Web that offer assistance in helping you determining scams and hoaxes from the real deal. But the ones we've listed have been around a long time and are trustworthy and tested by millions of users over many years.

As a rule of thumb, most all "virus warnings" and "watch out for this" type emails that spread among friends are hoaxes. Keep that in mind - and if you're not sure check it out on one of the sites above.

Yours was an excellent question and a very smart question too. Passing along hoaxes or fake virus warnings just keeps these scams and hoaxes alive.