A free virus scan

Alan from the pho list offers this tidbit for those who think they might have a virus or those who want to make sure their antivirus software is working:

http://www.pandasoftware.com/activelink

This will scan and repair your system for free.

Sobig virus returns

I've gotten about 200 "bounced" emails in the past day from emails I allegedly sent out ... but didn't. Turns out there's a virulent virus going around. Dave Farber was hit, too.

News.com: World squirms as Sobig returns.

I suppose nothing can be done about this, but the writer should certainly have addressed that obvious question.

In any event, it's time to rethink my general opposition to the death penalty. For the virus culprit, not the writer.

The Metallica hoax

Guardian UK: How did a Metallica spoof turn into a hugely effective viral marketing campaign for an obscure Canadian rock band?

When news of Metallica's latest lawsuit hit the web, music fans across the globe were outraged. Already notorious for their legal action against file-sharing network Napster, the rock band were seemingly trying to stop musicians from using the guitar chords E and F.

Announcing the band's decision to sue the obscure Canadian outfit Unfaith, the drummer Lars Ulrich said: "We're not saying we own those two chords, individually - that would be ridiculous. We're just saying that in that specific order, people have grown to associate E, F with our music."

It was a classic David and Goliath story - obscure, unsigned band picked on by rich rockers - and it was widely reported. As Unfaith singer/songwriter Erik Ashley explains: "Within minutes, literally hundreds of message boards lit up, including those of legitimate music news sources."

It turned up on Ananova and on DotMusic, on MSNBC, MacDailyNews and on weblogs. Industry insiders expressed their outrage in mailing lists, and music fans filled internet message boards with anti-Metallica diatribes. Radio stations played Unfaith's music in anti-Metallica protests, Rolling Stone magazine got in touch, and The Onion sent a message of support.

But they missed one key detail: the story was a hoax. What looked like a bizarre action by out-of-touch rockers was in fact a spoof that within a few hours it had taken on a life of its own.

Like any successful scam, the hoax worked for two reasons: it seemed believable, and it was beautifully executed. ...

Actually, this was a pretty obvious crock on its face (if an inspired bit of viral marketing). Come on, people, checking out these hoaxes is only a few clicks away.

Snopes founders doing journalists' job

Mark Glaser in OJR has a Q&A with the founders of leading Internet hoax busters Snopes.com. David and Barbara Mikkelson's site got a big boost after 9/11, and their success at unmasking the lie about hunters shooting naked women in the Las Vegas desert (Hunting for Bambi) has now made them even more well known. Excerpt:

MG: So what made you think "Hunting for Bambi" was a hoax?

DM: Part of it is that we start off with the thought that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Our approach is going to be that something outrageous is going to be a hoax. But that's unfortunately not what a lot of people in the media do. They say, "This is real, and we'll see if there's proof it isn't."

MG: So you start off with the assumption that everything's a hoax until proven real?

DM: In a general sense. I can't say that applies to everything. We start out by saying, is there anything that proves this to be true. Absolutely the worst approach you can take -- and unfortunately the approach that most people in the media take -- is simply to contact the hoaxer and ask, "Are you on the level?" No one will put the time and effort into perpetrating a hoax simply to say, "Oh, you got me." Simply by approaching him, you've both alerted him that you're on his trail, and you quite possibly have given him clues as to what people might be looking for to verify that it's phony and will give him ideas on how to improve the hoax. ...

Reporters should take a page from their playbook. I wish the Chicago Tribune had interviewed them for its story on Bambi and Internet hoaxes, which I wrote about on Monday.

Debunking Internet hoaxes and scams

I'm quoted in today's Chicago Tribune in Maureen Ryan's article, Did you hear the one about men hunting women with paintballs? Lead:

The story had sex, violence and, well, more sex. In other words, the "Hunting for Bambi" controversy was a dream come true for the news media and outraged commentators. Too bad it was a scam.

Because this is as much a story about the recurring phenomenon of Internet hoaxes as it is about the Bambi incident, here are some observations I sent along to the Tribune's reporter:

A week doesn't go by that a relative or friend doesn't send me an e-mail saying they had 'heard this on the Internet' and wondered if it was true. I finally put up a Web page to steer people to hoax-debunking sites that size up rumors that spread on the Net like an unchecked virus. For better or worse (and it's clearly both), the Internet has become another news medium. And we're still flummoxed about what and who we should trust online.

I'm always amazed at the credulity of people who tend to believe something just because they read it on the Internet. We need to fine-tune our BS meters by expressing skepticism each time we come across a far-out story from an unverified source. Over time, the Internet helps us develop reputation filters and circles of trust to help us filter out the nonsense.

Newspapers and television newscasts seem to be abdicating their traditional role of verifying the accuracy and truthfulness of certain stories, and that role has been taken over by a new breed of Web sites that specialize in debunking Internet hoaxes.

For a story like Hunting for Bambi, a story editor at a newspaper or TV station tends to see it as a soft-news feature, a story about what a wacky world we live. They won't commit the resources to tracking down its truthfulness because it's too good to pass up and they don't believe the subject matter warrants serious treatment.

But for Snopes, Urban Legends and other hoax-buster sites, they're in the business of tracking down the credibility of this story. In the years to come, they'll play an increasingly important role in the media landscape.

Some last thoughts:

Two weeks after 9/11, my niece received an email from a friend's aunt's boyfriend, calling for a nationwide boycott of Dunkin Donuts. The basis? The supposed existence of a video showing the Arab owners of a Dunkin Donuts franchise in Lyndhurst, N.J., cheering the attack on the World Trade Center, a supposed sighting of the owner of a Dunkin Donuts store in Cedar Grove, N.J., burning the American flag, and a customer who allegedly saw a U.S. flag on the floor covered with Arabic writing in a Dunkin Donuts store in Little Falls, N.J. I told my niece the stories were obvious fabrications at a time when terrorist jitters and a hint of xenophobia were in the air.

In this age of lightning-speed hoaxes, I'd like to see newspapers and magazines publish a recurring 'reality check' column. Report on the rumors floating around cyberspace, their genesis, and their level of truthfulness or fabrication.

Later: Ken reminds us to Check Your Hoax-o-Meter.

Hunting for Bambi

Here's the Hunting for Bambi website that everybody's talking about (the official site is down due to overwhelming demand). Bambi has the news media flummoxed. (Is it real? Snopes says no: Has a Las Vegas business been conducting hunts of naked women for customers armed with paintball guns?)

Microsoft's iLoo goes down the tubes

Mike Cassidy in today's San Jose Merc: For two glorious weeks we had the iLoo. Talk about the high-water mark of the Digital Age. Microsoft's Internet-enabled outhouse promised to take us where no man or woman had gone before. But now the dream of the wired toilet is over.