"Please read this message, important for your health, and pass it on to every woman you know who is using feminine hygiene products!!!"
With this statement a forwarded e-mail begins its claim that tampons are dangerous because they contain asbestos, which "makes you bleed more," and dioxin, which "is potentially carcinogenic (cancer-associated) and is toxic to the immune and reproductive systems." At the bottom of the e-mail several seemingly reputable names appear: "Donna C. Boisseau & Stephanie C. Baker; assistants to Dr. B.S. Katzenellenbogen, Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Department of Molecular and Integrative Physiology."
Though the association of the subject with these names may make the e-mail appear to be true, like many other forwarded messages, it is a hoax.
But Baker is a real woman, who had her life touched personally when the e-mail message began to circulate around the world.
Baker said her name became attached to the e-mail after she sent it along with comments pertaining to its absurdity to a few friends in November 1998.
"I thought [the e-mail] was ridiculous," she said.
Her signature file, containing her name and Dr. Katzenellenbogen's, was attached automatically to the e-mail. Being new to her position, Baker said she did not realize the e-mail program automatically attached the signature file.
The e-mail Baker forwarded was altered later, she said, with her comments deleted and her name moved and, in many editions, combined with that of Boisseau, a person unknown to Baker and whose name had been on the e-mail when Baker received it.
"Anybody can alter anything," Baker said of forwarded e-mail messages.
The content of several editions of the e-mail also was changed, she said.
"The original didn't include anything about asbestos," she added.
When fourth-year Engineering student Courtney Salthouse received the message, she said she became suspicious because of the unusual grammar.
"I always check when I get anything with capital letters and exclamation points," Salthouse said.
After performing an Internet search with the keywords "asbestos" and "tampons," Salthouse said she found a site with a formal disavowal of the e-mail content from Katzenellenbogen and Baker(www.life.uiuc.edu/csb/faculty/katz_disavowal.html). Salthouse also found a FDA site denying tampons contain dangerous levels of asbestos or dioxin (www.fda.gov/cdrh/ocd/tamponsabs.html).
Although such information denying the claims of the e-mail is readily available on the Internet, Baker said her association with the e-mail has caused a great deal of problems and questions for her office, including those from health care professionals.
She said calls first alerted her to her association with the e-mail in March 1998.
"The most striking thing is that professional people and physicians contact this office thinking this is real information," she added. "People just accept it."
Baker said she has tried to disassociate herself from the false e-mail, but it continues to proliferate, including the copy that Salthouse received in late January.
"The people who keep promoting this know it didn't come from here, but it's benefiting them," Baker said.
This e-mail message is only one example of the many hoaxes circulating through cyberspace.
There are several main categories of e-mail hoaxes and legends, including "health-related scare messages," false virus alerts, "good-will type chain letters" and "get rich schemes," Asst. Dean of Students Pablo Davis said.
"The ones [ITC] get most often are virus hoaxes," Chief Technology Analyst Tony Townsend said.
"The biggest danger is it's very hard to tell the truth," Townsend said. "There are more bad than good, which makes people let their guard down."
Some of the health-related hoaxes contain "enough of a grain of truth" to cause people to believe them, Davis said.
For example, he said he recently received a message concerning flesh-eating bacteria and how the bacteria can be transmitted through certain types of fruit.
The e-mail used the correct scientific name of a type of bacteria, making it appear to be true, he added.
"In reality, anything that you have some degree of nervousness about, often that can be targeted by e-mail messages," Davis said.
Many e-mail hoaxes have developed from stories pre-dating the Internet.
"A lot of legends that used to circulate by word of mouth now circulate by e-mail," Davis said.
Though such legends may have been around for quite a while, e-mail may increase the speed by which they spread and the skepticism by which they are received.
"I think students and other people are a little less skeptical [of e-mail] than of hearing by word of mouth," Davis said.
Another problem with e-mail hoaxes is continual recirculation.
"We see the same ones over and over again," said Robert "Chip" German, ITC director of policy and planning.
Students can do several things to distinguish hoaxes and help prevent their spread.
A person should be careful whenever there is "no further way to check up on" the validity of the message, when phrases such as "Forward to everyone you know" are used, and "if the national press hasn't covered it," Davis said.
Hoax e-mails can be recognized "by the number of exclamation points in the subject line," Townsend said.
When people suspect that an e-mail is false, there are several Internet sites they can check.
Davis recommends checking www.urbanlegends.com, a site that lists many of the different hoax e-mails now circulating.
The ITC Web site also has a system status part that will sometimes give information concerning a particularly popular hoax.
One of the main keys to preventing the spread of hoax e-mails is for people to learn to approach forwarded e-mails with skepticism.
"The thing I would like to see is for people to develop a certain nose for" hoaxes, Davis said.
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