More Netiquette - Hoaxes, lies, and wasted time reading them
Most of you have received an email from a friend telling you (and one thousand of their MOST personal friends, all of whom's email addresses are there for you to see) either:
- Steve Jobs will give you $50 if you pass this email on to ten of your friends, or
- There's a dying kid in England who is trying to set the world record by collecting different business cards from all over the world (please send yours and pass this email on to all of your friends), or
- Your cell phone number will be published in a public directory to become available in the next (2, 10, 30) days (take your pick) and you should call an 800 number to opt-out of (say "no" to) the list and forward this to all your friends, or
- There's an email going around with the subject "You've received a greeting card from a friend". Don't open it. It will erase your hard drive, so email all your friends and warn them, or
- Blah, blah, blah!
There are many people out in the Internet ether who don't understand that these emails have been out there, some for over ten years, and none of them are true. (Do you REALLY believe Bill Gates is going to send you money?? And how would he find out you sent the email around to the correct number of friends? Do you even HAVE ten friends?)
Some of these can be identified just by putting a little thought to the subject matter, as I said above. Unless you know Mr. Gates, he ain't sending you nothin'! (And even then, I doubt it.)
However, there is help available. There are a number of sites that tell you whether or not the emails you get like these are true or garbage.
I always start with Snopes. Snopes is the name of a very unpleasant family that William Faulkner used in a number of his writings. It's a great site, quite comprehensive, and easy to navigate. Just enter the subject of the email or some significant portion of the body and search. Scan through the list you get and read.
Others include:
- The Straight Dope
- purportal.com (I love that name!)
- Truth or Fiction
- Scambusters.org, and
- Hoax Info
Some of these venture into the political arena to debunk lies spread on the Internet about national candidates for office. However, the best one I've seen for political debunking, and possibly the most reliable, comes out of U Penn, called Annenberg Political FactCheck. It is part of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, housed at the University of Pennsylvania, and is part of the Annenberg Foundation. All legit.
So, when you receive an email that might be an Internet hoax, go to Snopes.com and check it out before you send it to your best buds. In addition, do the same for political emails deriding a candidate at Annenberg Political FactCheck. If it's bogus, don't send it on.
You will be glad you did, because you are no longer spouting rumor and you know the truth. Your friends will thank you for not pestering them and making THEM look this stuff up and having to tell you YOU'RE full of dog poo.
By the way, if you discover that something sent to you is a hoax or a lie, email back the person that sent it to you. Include the link to the place you found the truth so they can see it themselves and ask them to send out a retraction to the thousand of their best friends they sent it out to in the first place. At the very least, that friend might take you off his or her email list so you stop getting this stuff!
Thank you all for listening to this and, in advance, doing something about it!
Visit my website - Plait Solutions
For debunking, breakthechain.org is also pretty good.
A word of warning on emailing people back, though - my boss did that once, and the recipient immediately tried to forward *his* email to all of their friends outwith our organisation! Thankfully, we had anticipated that this might happen, and setup a filter on our mail gateway, but it's a reminder that some people will never understand the dangers of spamming their friends, no matter how many times you explain...
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Thanks, Lain. Good advice.
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Sid,
Good Job. Thanks.
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Two countries seperated by a common language!
What I meant was that we caught the person passing a hoax around inside the company. When they got the warning email, they then tried to forward it out to their friends and family from their work address. The boss wasn't too keen to have his name and email address distributed in that fashion!
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I apologize, lain. I know better than that.
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I always check Snopes when I get one of those scaremonger or otherwise dubious email forwards. Then I reply with the link. Thanks for the other links, though! There are a couple that I was not familiar with (purportal.com and truthorfiction.com). They are in my bookmarks now.
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