Reading Report 1 "Web Hoaxes, Counterfeit Sites, and Other Spurious Information on the Internet"

There a number of different types of hoax sites including: counterfeit, malicious, product, fictions, parodies/spoofs, hacks, and disinformation. While most of these are not harmful, they can still cause confusion, anger and potentially serious problems, especially regarding malicious and counterfeit sites. There are many sites that disguise themselves as information, but then prove later to have ulterior motives a prime example being malicious hate sites and hacked sites, which purposefully distribute misinformation. Martinlutherking.org is a well known hater site, which posts pro-white information on the civil rights movement. Sites also mislead users by using addresses like .org or by claiming to be partners with established organizations.

Sites that run on user submitted information, such as “Wikipedia”, take precautions to verify the validity of information. Health websites are particularly susceptible to misinformation, since less informed and susceptible people are mislead by advertisements for new age “cures”. September 11th brought about its own surge of misleading information as thousands of fictitious charities were spread seeking to scam the grieving persons out of the money they thought thy were providing to relief organizations.


I personally enjoy a harmless spoof every now and again, the kind of sites that make us revaluate what society today holds as important. However, it is a real shame that there exists on the internet so much information that is totally false. If I am trying to look for information for a paper or project, I don’t want to be anywhere near sites that spread propaganda or only provide one specific view of an event. While I am in full support of the freedom of speech, libel and slander should not be included. On sites that are only educational, there should be a censorship that restricts false information.