In the weeks following the crash of Flight 800 off of Long Island, Pierre Salinger made a highly-public announcement that he had received proof that the airliner had been shot down by a surface-to-air missile that was part of a malfunctioning military experiment. His proof consisted of documents sent to him via the Internet.

Within days, his credibility was badly damaged when Internet experts demonstrated that these documents were canards that have no basis in fact. In this case, the documents sounded convincing until they were checked against the outside facts and until one traced their web history.

While the Salinger incident was highly public, there exist many lesser examples of such frauds circulating daily through the Internet and fooling naive readers. Some examples received at Skidmore include:

• The American Cancer Society will donate 3 cents per email message received, toward cancer surgery for a gravely-ill girl.
• Bill Gates is testing the size of the Internet and will give $500 to every thousandth person who sends him email.
• Readers who open a mail message titled "...." will have their computer utterly destroyed.
• The U.S. Government is planning to tax e-mails and an immediate barrage of messages to Congress is the only way to prevent this disaster.