The biggest web-based hoaxes and scams ever

It happens on the same date every year, but there are still people who get caught out on April Fool's Day. Out they come - the stories about spaghetti trees, the Leaning Tower of Pisa falling over, or the BBC broadcasting programmes in fragrant Smell-o-Vision. And there's always someone who falls for it.

The most famous April Fool tricks tend to be the ones that get printed in newspapers and magazines or broadcast on television, simply because these have the potential to reach millions of people all around the world.

The same, then, is obviously true of the internet, the most widespread communications medium that has ever existed.

If the internet is the greatest source of information in the world, it is also potentially an equally great source of misinformation. The endless scams and fake emails that pour into our inboxes every day are certainly a case in point.

This is the darker side to online hoaxes, and the recent spate of phishing emails that attempt to make recipients part with cash or online bank or eBay account details have been the focus of much media attention of late.

The classic phishing scam was the 'Nigerian' email, in which a fake Nigerian businessman or politician asked for help in getting his multi-million pound fortune out of Nigeria in order to escape a military coup. More recently, we've seen the arrival of various scams in which people receive fake emails that claim to be from their bank or credit card company.

We looked at this in more detail in our Dealing with online fraud feature, offering practical advice on how to avoid becoming a victim of online scams.

For all the more sinister online or email-based hoaxes, though, there have been plenty of less offensive, large-scale practical jokes that have enjoyed success on the net. In this feature, we will expose some of the biggest web-based hoaxes and scams ever, along with a general helping of online oddness.

Pranks for the memories
One of our favourite online April Fool's pranks was the fake press release announcing that Microsoft was planning to buy the Catholic Church and start making 'religious software'. The story got a surprising amount of coverage, although the announcement that the Pope would become a vice president of Microsoft and Bill Gates would become a cardinal rather gave the game away.

Not surprisingly, international mega-corporations such as Microsoft regularly come in for stick on the web and there have been several April Fool stories about Bill Gates running for president or Microsoft trying to buy the rights to Christmas.

The April Fools 'R' Us website has a long list of famous April Fool jokes, and it's got a search option so you can type in a specific word such as 'Microsoft' and look up hoaxes linked to that word.

Hack attacks
Another big company that is targeted on a regular basis is Disney. Back in 1998, hackers broke into the website of the world-famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and planted a fake announcement that MIT had been bought by Walt Disney so that Disney could get its hands on MIT's computer and robotics technology.

The hackers even put a fake picture on the website showing MIT's headquarters sporting a giant pair of Mickey Mouse ears on its roof.

If this tickles your fancy, there's also a website called Urban Legends that has a collection of Disney rumours and stories, as well as a large library of other assorted urban legends organised by category.

Hacking attacks on otherwise legitimate websites have become increasingly common in recent years. Even the CIA has fallen victim, having seen the name on its website changed on one occasion to 'Central Stupidity Agency'.

However, hacking attacks aren't always good-humoured as they're often carried out by angry protest groups. The Nike website, for instance, was once hacked in protest at its employment policies in third world countries, with the message: 'Prepare for Global Justice.'

Closer to home, the Labour Party's website has been hacked twice in recent years. The first time a false link was added to the 'Labour Women' page that took you off to a porn site, and more recently there was a picture planted on the website of George W Bush and his pet dog with Tony Blair's head superimposed over the dog's head.

Beating around the Bush
And that, of course, brings us to President Bush, the political figure who is probably subject to more ridicule and rumour than any other in the world. All sorts of tall tales about President Bush have been spread around the internet, including the allegation that he once refused to sell his house to black people.

One bright spark even managed to grab the web address 'www.gwbush.com' and pass it off as the President's personal website; "drug-free since 1974" boasted the banner headline.

The site attracted more than six million visitors when it opened during Bush's first presidential election campaign in 1999 but some of its content was so libellous that Bush's lawyers quickly had it shut down.

Another site with a political theme but greater longevity is The White House. This site is more obviously satirical and therefore protected under US freedom of speech laws.

We also came across one funny Bush story that actually turned out to be true at Adland. The Bihn clothing company prints labels on its products in both English and French and after Bush's first election victory someone noticed that the French label translated into the words - "Wash with warm water. Do not iron. We are sorry that our President is an idiot. We did not vote for him."

Counterfeit sites
Strictly speaking, of course, sites such don't count as April Fool's jokes as they're intended to be permanent websites. Having said that, the internet is such a rich hunting ground for jokes and hoaxes that it seems a shame to limit ourselves just to April Fool's Day.

In fact, one of the advantages of having a permanent website is that the hoaxsters can go into great detail in order to make their stories all the more convincing. Take a look here and you'll find a very slick, professional-looking website that claims to be set up by the Dwayne Medical Centre, chronicling the world's first male pregnancy.

The happy father-to-be is one Lee Mingwei and the site includes his personal diary along with a series of video clips and pseudo-scientific reports documenting this great medical 'breakthrough'.

Then there's the Brain Transplant site, where for just $499,000 elderly people can enjoy perpetual youth by having their brains transplanted into healthy young bodies. They've even got a catalogue of good-looking bodies to choose from.

Some pranksters really do go to extraordinary lengths to produce convincing hoaxes. There's a website called Trailer Vision that produces really quite impressive fake trailers for non-existent Hollywood blockbusters, such as 'Escape to Canada' and 'Harry Potter - The Dragon Inside'.

Unfortunately, it costs a lot of money to produce these trailers so you need to take out a subscription to see all the material on this site ($10 per month or $30 per year). However there is a selection of trailers that you can view free of charge.

Celebrity hoaxes
Not all internet hoaxes are quite so elaborate, though. There are the usual celebrity hoaxes that can be dismissed in a matter of seconds: Britney Spears is a man, Robbie Williams is a cyborg, that sort of thing.

You can find plenty of celebrity stories in the Museum Of Hoaxes. This is a well-organised site, with a search feature that allows you to view categories such as 'celebrities', 'fake photos' and 'conspiracy theories'.

It's also got a 'graveyard' with information about some of the more famous fake websites that have appeared in the past but which have since been shut down, such as BanBreastFeeding.org and the infamous ManBeef.com, a site that claimed to sell human flesh as a gourmet delicacy.

But the best website for celebrity stories and fake photos is probably the Urban Legends section of About.com. This site also has a huge archive of old rumours and hoaxes, as well as a regularly updated list of the Top 25 current stories.

However, our favourite from this site has to be the photo of The Queen sitting with a group of kilted Scottish soldiers with one soldier's relaxed posture showing rather more than just a smile. Is it real or fake? Perhaps we'll never know for sure.

And this is where we turn serious for a moment. The point is that we've all become so used to using the internet as a source of information that we're in danger of taking it all at face value. Even the word 'google', the name of the popular search engine, has become a verb meaning 'to search for on the internet'.

Just because you read something in the media, doesn't mean that it's necessarily true and that's especially true of the virtual world of the web, where reality can be edited at the drop of a hat. So just remember to think twice before you swallow any of the stories you read in emails or on websites.