To the editor:

Personally I don’t wait until something appears in a newspaper to find out if it’s an e-mail hoax. There are too many excellent online resources that provide the answer far more quickly. (For example, the BestBuy hoax was revealed as a scam online on June 18 — the day the phony e-mail was sent out!)

Any time you get an e-mail like the BestBuy scam … or an e-mail that asks you to forward it on to “everyone in your address book'” whether it’s a “virus warning” or a plea to “help this sick kid set a world record ” or “Bill Gates wants to send you $$$” or countless others, check it out at one of the following sites before responding or forwarding. There’s enough junk mail in the world. You don’t need to be adding to it or be hurt by it.

Here are some of the many excellent hoax and scam Internet sites. Note: if you don’t find something listed at one, check the others as no one place is perfect.

Hoaxes:

http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org

www.truthorfiction.com

Virus hoaxes:

http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html

http://vil.mcafee.com/hoax.asp

Urban legends:

http://urbanlegends.about.com

www.snopes.com

Also, here is a site with some excellent information on how to recognize an e-mail scam:

http://familyinternet.about.com/library/weekly/aa061603d.htm

Kendall Simmons,

Lawrence