How to Check Out a Hoax With Ease

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By John Rapp
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Check Out a Hoax With Ease

Most of the outrageous e-mails constantly being forwarded across the Internet are usually at least a little bit untrue. Some are complete hoaxes! But how can you prove it? Easy! Here's how to check out a hoax with ease.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Step 1

Fire up the old Internet browser and go to Snopes.com. Snopes is one of the oldest and most respected online resources when it comes to things like urban legends, myths and hoaxes.
Step 2

Run a search for the particular hoax you're looking for. If you're trying to verify the legitimacy of an e-mail message, just copy a block of text from the e-mail and paste it in the Snopes search box.
Step 3

Scan the results for your hoax in question. This is a lot easier if you have copied and pasted lines directly from an e-mail or somewhere else online. Snopes has a huge archive of hoaxes and urban legends that have been passed around for years and years. So if you copy and paste lines directly from the source of the potential hoax, usually Snopes will have the exact same text in their hoax archives. Find a result that looks relevant and click on it.
Step 4

Check the legitimacy of your information and see if you're dealing with a hoax. Snopes will tell you whether the story is true, false or a mixture of both, and then go on to give you way more information that you probably were looking for. Snopes has an arduous process for classifying and logging all the information they have collected over the years, and at the end of each page they cite their direct sources.
Step 5

Report your findings to the world! Go back to whoever sent you that e-mail and tell them what you found out. People can get really worked up over hoaxes, so when you check out a hoax make sure to spread the word on your findings. It's an uphill battle, but truth spreads one person at a time.