If you saw a man walking down the street with polka-dotted purple pants and wearing a fried egg on his head, you’d immediately suspect he was not to be taken seriously.
Similarly, a handful of warning markers define emails to ignore.
Any message with:
1) Lots of ALL CAPS or multi-colored text.
2) Multiple exclamation marks!!!!!!!
3) “This has never been reported in the media.”
4) “Pass this on to everyone you know!”
5) “We are collecting signatures."
6) “Warning!” “Virus alert!”
7) “This is a true story!” “This really happened!” “A friend told me...”
8) “This is not a hoax!” “This is not an urban legend!”
9) “This has been checked with Snopes.com, and is authentic.”
10) Any message without provenance; that is, one that does not cite a specific date and source, preferably in the form of an URL that can be clicked to verify its authenticity.
Here’s where I go to check bogus stuff:
http://urbanlegends.about.com/
Snopes.com
Truthorfiction.com
Scambusters.com
In my experience, only the first two have enough staffing to be as comprehensive as they should be. Unfortunately, there’s so much silly stuff flying around the net that it’s almost impossible for any one site to keep track of it.
Even so, the Urban Legends site will often reproduce the bogus items you've just gotten word-for-word.
But be aware that a few perpetrators will embroider a bogus items or jumble it together with another one.
What everyone needs most is horse sense, as elaborated in these references:
http://urbanlegends.about.com/cs/urbanlegends/ht/urbanlegends.htm
http://urbanlegends.about.com/cs/nethoaxes/ht/emailhoax.htm
http://www.hoax-slayer.com/spotting-email-hoaxes.html
this last one also has specific advice categories about
avoiding spam,
Nigerian scams, and much more:
In my opinion, everyone should always check out the Urban Legends or Snopes websites before forwarding emails. Otherwise, we're just wasting people's time and contributing to ignorance.
I’m kind of a bear about this stuff. It dates back to the time when my company first got connected to the Internet, and immediately secretaries began filling our mailboxes with newbie-bait. (Chain letters, virus warnings, pleas for the mythical boy dying of cancer who was collecting business cards so he could get into the Guinness Book of Records, etc.)
This wasted our limited bandwidth (not to mention employees’ time), and as co-owner of the joint, I stomped on it real hard.
I'm also a real bear about plagiarism, but that's a subject for another post.
