Reading #1

"Web Hoaxes, Counterfeit Sites, and Other Spurious Information on the Internet"
By Paul S. Piper

As information becomes more easily available for the public, it is important to have reservations about what you encounter. It is amazing the detailed and extravagant hoaxes groups and individuals will pursue to mislead the public as much as they can. A great example of the great lengths and details these hoaxes are conducted with is the story of Dr. Bichlbauer from the counterfeit homepage of the World Trade Organization. A trade group requested the author of the web site to address their conference, which he accepted, stating rash ideas, and then staging his own death in a fabricated attack when he returned home. As well as hoaxes there are a number of suspicious web sites that simply are created to stir the public. Web sites such as the one attempting to “disprove” the Holocaust took place. These web sites go to such lengths as having Ph. D references, but if dug deeper into these sites, links and opinions are most likely to surface.

While sites geared toward entertainment and comedy can be obvious counterfeit, some sites are not as obvious. The free press has picked up a story or two that was false reporting it as real to the public. This is a very serious problem when the press reports a false article to the pubic who will take it as the truth. This raises my concerns, and the abundance of disinformation available.

I am appalled by the fake organizations that created donor sites claming to help support specific causes or to help the families of those suffering. These scam sites took advantage of good people to better themselves and keep the donations.

I did not realize how many different attacks there are on information on the web, and how easily accessed it is. I have already read several of these web sites mention in the article and did not realize what I was reading until now. I even regarded my internet capabilities as above average and still was fooled by counterfeit sites. I believe knowledge of detecting a counterfeit site should be brought up more commonly, decreasing the chance of success of distributing disinformation.