Web Hoax Almost Gives Brooklyn High School Students Day Off
As a student, there is nothing better than getting an unexpected day off from school. Unfortunately, for the students of Brooklyn Technical High School yesterday, the promise of a day away from school work was nothing more than an illusion; a hoax orchestrated by the creative mind of a student and the power of anonymous Internet messaging tools.
According to the New York Times, several members of the Brooklyn Technical High School Student Government received an e-mail on Sunday evening explaining that school was called off the following day due to a construction accident. The message allegedly came from a Vice Principal at the school and appeared to match his e-mail address.
Doing their civic duty as the school’s student leaders, the students passed along the information to thousands of their peers through social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace. Luckily (or unluckily if you were a students), school administrators caught wind of the hoax early and were able to get the truth out. The Times report says that the attendance rate was 90.9%, which is not beyond normal expectations.
In considering this story, one marvels at how quickly deliberate misinformation can spread online. While many students questioned the original e-mail validity, it didn’t stop them from spreading it to their friends. Truthfully, I’m amazed that the school district was able to respond so quickly to the hoax.
To be fair to the students, it appears that some kind of spoof e-mail service was used to mimic the actual e-mail address of the Vice Prinicipal, which gave the message (grammar mistakes and all) an air of authenticity that would be hard to spot at a quick glance. Plus, when you’re looking at a day off school, you don’t want to think about it too much, you just want to celebrate.
While the consequences of this particular hoax were relatively mild, the possibility of someone using a well-orchestrated e-mail hoax to cause significant reputation damage to an individual or business is a serious concern. In a world where we consume digital media with ruthless speed, it isn’t that difficult to watch a hoax spread out of control. Just ask actor Zach Braff, who was proclaimed dead by the masses on Twitter before people realized a CNN article about his alleged suicide was nothing more than a spoof.
At an individual level, it is imperative that we consider the information we are reading online. Google has made it easy to find information, but that doesn’t always mean that the information is accurate. If may take a few extra minutes, but spending time to doublecheck the facts is an important step we can all take to help bring civility to the web.
