By Chris Cosci

The Internet is known for many things: information, online shopping, and chat rooms filled entirely with 13-year-old boys trying to meet women. However, the most notable aspect of Internet life is e-mail. And what would e-mail be without e-mail hoaxes?

The very first e-mail was sent in 1971 by a computer engineer named Ray Tomlinson. He sent it to himself, from one computer to another, both of which were right next to each other. The simple message was "QWERTYUIOP," the top row of letters on the standard keyboard. Though disputed by experts, the second e-mail is believed to be a comical story about a man being charged $250 by Neiman Marcus for their top secret chocolate chip cookie recipe.

Over the years, dozens of hoaxes have been forwarded to millions of e-mail users, tricking people into believing that Bill Gates would send them money or that they would die a horrible death if they didn't forward the e-mail to seventy-nine other people. Usually, hoaxes consist of either a humorous story or a cautionary tale. Some of the original hoaxes have gained notoriety in the world of urban legends. Many of these hoaxes succeeded because they were just crazy enough to be believable. Even some of the most experienced users were gleefully fooled.

Now, hoaxes are easier to spot because users have become more skeptical and the stories have become less credible. Recently, an e-mail was forwarded to me that was supposedly written by a woman who was approached by a couple of men in a Walmart parking lot. According to her story, the men asked her what kind of perfume she was wearing. They then proceeded to ask her if she would be willing to smell a new perfume that they were selling at a discount price.

She refused to smell the perfume because of an e-mail she remembered receiving, warning her about a perfume scam. The e-mail mentioned that the men performing this scam would have the victim sniff ether, causing the victim to pass out. The scammers would then steal the victim's belongings.

The woman finishes her story by thanking her e-mail friend for passing along the valuable information, and she encourages everyone to keep passing the information along.

It sounds like a plausible story, but I have one major problem with it. What woman in her right mind would willingly sniff something offered to her by strange men in a Walmart parking lot? This doesn't seem like something you have to tell people to avoid. It's like warning people not to stick their tongue into an electrical outlet.

To make the story more incredible, the only action this woman took was to send out an e-mail to people, warning them about the scam. If she knew that these two men were trying to make women pass out so they could steal their belongings, why didn't she call the police? The least she could have done was walk back to Walmart and alert the security guards.

Who knows? Maybe there are a couple of guys out there actually trying to pull this scam off. And maybe, in a Macy's parking lot somewhere, two women are trying to lure guys into tasting a new brand of "beer." The question is, do we really need an e-mail to tell us to avoid these people? I certainly hope not.