We keep seeing more and more hoaxes that ask you to forward something to all your friends (this should alert you immediately that it's most likely a hoax). They will typically claim that you are helping someone by doing this forwarding. We have seen over one-hundred different hoaxes that share the following characteristics:

1. They want you to forward the message to "all your friends".

2. A claim is made that you or some worthy person will get money or some other compensation for forwarding the hoax.

If you see either of the two above elements in an email message, you can disregard it immediately and assume it's a hoax! We have seen too many such hoaxes to document each one in detail here.

Some of the more common hoaxes claim a certain amount of money will be donated each time a message is forwarded (often to some worthy charity or to help some sick or otherwise deserving individual). Many people think, "what the heck....it can't hurt to forward the message". But PLEASE don't forward the message. Forwarding the message can not result in any money being donated and will further waste internet bandwidth and other people's time.

If you get a message and are asked to forward it to all your friends, please do not do it!

If you get a message that claims that some money will be donated or some other favorable action will occur if you forward it, you can assume it's a hoax and immediately ignore the message.

These hoaxes can vary a great deal but they will all tend to have the above two characteristics. The The Bill Gates / Windows 98 Hoax is a good example of a hoax like this.

In last few weeks we have seen a number of (so-far) limited distribution hoaxes that are similar to the The Disney / Bill Gates Email Hoax but don't mention Bill Gates or Disney.