Hoax – What it is? How to detect and remove it?

You know that hoax means to deceive, and in the same sense, a hoax virus tricks a computer user through false warnings. These false warnings can provoke the user to take some actions, which can damage the system or can erase the entire hard disks. These are not just simple warnings, but they consist of complete instructions and technical details to trick people into deleting significant files. A hoax tells to delete files such as jdbgmgr.exe or sulfnbk.exe, but if you do so, then you can directly damage your operating system, and will have to reinstall these files to repair your OS.

Ways of recognizing a hoax

The hoaxes normally reach people through emails and spread through the same. However, the best protection against hoaxes is to identify them and stop them from forwarding to other systems. For identifying email hoaxes, one should look for features such as:

  • Free giveaways in return of forwarding the email
  • Fake virus alerts
  • Appeals for helping sick children
  • Fictional warnings and details about viruses, and immediate call to action
  • Petitions leading to nowhere
  • Indicators to send the mail to everyone in address book

Damage done by a hoax

Even though a hoax virus is not a virus in the real sense, but it does not imply that these are free of negative effects. A hoax can damage your system in many different ways. In the first place, you damage your system yourself because of fake information, and in doing so, you waste a lot of time and resources that leads to nothing but your own loss. Such emails come full of addresses and if you forward the message, then the damage multiplies. Last but not the least it will damage your reputation, as the receiver of the email will take you as the one who forwarded the fake message.

Ways of deleting a hoax

Some of the hoaxes infects your computer and enable fake pop ups to crop up while you surf the internet. This can be a threat to your privacy, making it important to remove such hoax from your system. The main steps to remove a hoax include:

  • Install a security program
  • Boot your system in safe mode
  • Run the security program to eradicate the hoax from your computer

If you have received an email hoax, then delete it immediate instead of forwarding it to other users.

Words of warning

A good way of preventing a hoax damaging your computer is to keep an eye on fake alerts. No matter how technical the email sounds, but try to look for areas that reveal the true nature of an email hoax. Receiving the email from a known person, does not validate the nature of the email, so make sure that you check it properly. If the email reports words of an organization, then search online to find out about the organization. If you identify the virus, then you can further search, whether the virus is actually a hoax or not, and then take steps to remove it from your system.

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