About Hoax-Slayer

Mission Statement

The goal of the Hoax-Slayer Website is to help make the Internet a safer, more pleasant and more productive environment by:

Debunking email and Internet hoaxes
Thwarting Internet scammers
Educating web users about email and Internet security issues
Combating spam

About Hoax-Slayer’s Mission

Hoaxes spread misinformation, waste bandwidth, and lessen the effectiveness of the Internet as a communication tool. Hoaxes circulate via email, social media, blogs, online forums, and fake-news websites. Hoax-Slayer helps stop the continued circulation of these hoaxes by publishing information about them. Hoax-Slayer allows Internet users to check the veracity of a large number of hoaxes. Information about new hoaxes is added regularly

Around the world, Internet scammers steal millions of dollars per year from unsuspecting Internet users. These criminal activities are successful largely because many Internet users are not aware of the ways in which scammers operate and may not recognise scam attempts if they are targeted. Hoax-Slayer aims to counteract these criminal activities by publishing information about common types of Internet scams and providing examples of scam messages.

Many users inadvertently compromise their online privacy and the security of their computer equipment because of poor computer security practices. Hoax-Slayer publishes information that makes users aware of email, Internet, and computer security issues and what to do about them.

Spam is the scourge of the Internet. Hoax-Slayer combats the problem by providing information that can help Internet users recognise and deal with spam.

We thoroughly research all articles published on Hoax-Slayer prior to publication. Our findings are based on information available via a variety of credible sources including other reputable websites, news articles, press releases, government or company publications and consumer alerts.

If required, we also contact companies, government departments, or other relevant entities directly to enquire about the veracity of particular messages.

Our articles generally include in-text hyperlinks and a separate reference list that allow readers to check the information for themselves.

About Brett Christensen

Hoax-Slayer is owned and operated by Brett Christensen from his home office in Bundaberg, Queensland, Australia. Bundaberg is a small city a few hours drive north of Brisbane and is famous for its rum, ginger beer and sugar cane.

Brett founded Hoax-Slayer in 2003. He researches and writes most of the articles published on Hoax-Slayer and manages the day-to-day running of the site.

Brett also publishes articles on a range of topics via his personal blog on Medium.

Brett Christensen

Site History

Work began on the Hoax-Slayer website in August 2003. Earlier in 2003, Brett Christensen created a Yahoo Email discussion group designed to debunk and expose hoaxes and scams. The idea for the Hoax-Slayer website grew out of this Yahoo group. In March 2004, Brett decided to close the Yahoo group and concentrate on adding information to the website and publishing the Hoax-Slayer Newsletter.

Since its launch, Hoax-Slayer has grown from a single home page to a large site with thousands of separate web pages. More articles are added to the website every week.

In 2015, work began on a new implementation of Hoax-Slayer that uses a modern content management system (CMS) supplied by WordPress. The CMS makes it much easier to publish and update material and perform site maintenance tasks. As a result, we can spend much more of our time writing articles and much less time performing mundane site maintenance tasks. So, we can offer even more content to our regular followers and visitors. The new CMS implementation has the web address hoax-slayer.net while the legacy site still lives at hoax-slayer.com. However, both versions are tightly integrated and function as one entity.

The original Hoax-Slayer is a very large site with thousands of separate web pages. Converting all of the existing content to the new CMS is not an easy or trivial matter and is an ongoing project. Nevertheless, in due course, all older pages will be moved to the new format. However, this will be done in such a way that people clicking older links will be automatically redirected to the new versions.

And, visitors can access all Hoax-Slayer articles on both the old and new systems via site menus and site search on both sites.