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There are a few characteristics which help to spot a hoax:
1. It's a warning message about a virus (or occasionally a Trojan) spreading on the Internet.
2. It's usually from an individual or from a trustworthy company, but never from a cited source.
3. It warns not to read or open an email message with a special subject (like "Good Times") or download the supposed virus and delete the message.
4. It describes the virus as having horrific destructive powers and often the ability to send itself by email.
5. It urges to alert everyone you know and usually tells you this more than once.
6. It seeks credibility by describing the virus in specious technical sounding language.
But although a virus hoax is now easily to spot, there is still a problem to concentrate on. It's obvious that for a virus to spread, it must be executed. Reading a mail message does not execute the mail message. BUT, Trojans and viruses have been found as executable attachments to email messages. If you save the attachment and scan it before executing it, you are safe (if you have a good anti-virus program of course).
Another problem is that some people who create real viruses can use known hoaxes to their advantage. A good example is the AOL4FREE hoax. This began as a hoax warning about a nonexistent virus. Once it was known that this was a hoax somebody began to distribute a destructive Trojan horse in a file named AOL4FREE attached to the original hoax virus warning! The lesson is: always remain vigilant and NEVER open a suspicious attachment!
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