The Long and Winding Cyberhoax: Political Theater on the Web
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
IT'S well known that some regions of cyberspace — Internet chat rooms,
for instance — are rife with poseurs and imaginary characters. But the World Wide Web is also a breeding ground for more elaborate deceptions, as demonstrated by the following cautionary tale about gall and gullibility in the information age.
The story begins with www.gatt.org, which looks at first glance like an official Web site of the World Trade Organization, the five-year-old Switzerland-based successor to the organization that oversaw the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Unfortunately for the organizers of an October legal seminar on international trade in Salzburg, Austria, a glance was all they gave it before clicking on the "contact" link and sending a speaking invitation to Mike Moore, the W.T.O.'s director-general.
Big mistake: it turns out the site is run by the Yes Men, a loose-knit group of anti-free-trade activists that views hoaxes as a legitimate weapon of protest. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/07/weekinreview/07WORD.html?pagewanted=all