Mr. Cs Top 12 Internet-Based April Fools Day Pranks

The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year. Mark Twain

An April 1 Usenet posting from Soviet Premier Chernenko announced that Kremvax, the USSR’s first Internet site, had been launched.

Apple announced a System 7.0 extension that would control coffee makers and soda machines from the desktop.

John Dvorak wrote a PC Computing article claiming that Congress was looking at a bill to make Web surfing while inebriated illegal.

A faux announcement stated that the U.N. General Assembly voted 165 to 6 to shut down the Internet because the uncontrolled flow of information was destabilizing governments.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation posted ‘news’ that a V-Chip for books was coming to give parents the ability to censor the printed media their kids were looking at.

A widely circulated e-mail claimed that the Internet would shut down from March 31 to April 2 to ‘clean out the flotsam and jetsam’ clogging the Web; Internet-crawling robots would perform the daunting task.

A Red Herring article claimed that a group called Tidal Wave Communications, using technology developed during the Gulf War, would allow users to send e-mail telepathically to a PC.

Netscape said its Open Directory Project was acquired by Microsoft and was now called the Gates Open Directory Project, or GOD. Its mission: Copyright the entire Web.

A story posted on Betterhumans.com that claimed a software developer from Texas contracted a virus from a computer spread quickly around the Web.

The Register.com posted a story that a company called Backfire Security developed software that traced the IP address of anyone hacking your system and launched an attack back in the hackers direction.

Virgin Mobile proclaimed it was releasing a reversed keypad cell phone for left-handed people.

Google was known for posting hoaxes such as the PigeonRank Web rating system and Copernicus moon-based research center, so when it announced Gmail on April 1, 2004, many people initially believed it was a hoax.