Only Forward the Facts

You go do your first daily e-mail check. You read a terribly sad or disturbing e-mail forwarded to you by your friend, a highly intelligent and credible individual. Your first instinct is to forward this to everyone on your e-mail address list, so you may tell everyone, so this will not happen to them. You are ready to hit the forward button.

Stop! Freeze! Hold it right there!

There are many e-mail forwards going around that are completely false and some that have been going around for years and have outdated information, although they may have been true years ago. You may have read them and may have even forwarded them. I am sure you are familiar with many of them: the many missing children, glade plug-ins causing fires, area code scams, the Louisiana serial killer (that was caught several years ago) and my personal favorite, reversing your ATM code at the ATM will automatically call the police. The list is just about endless!

The originators of these ridiculous emails, must be so proud of themselves. They have gotten their jollies from creating alarm for no reason and people keep passing them along. People are actually running around with these ideas in their heads actually believing they are real! The alarm created is completely unnecessary. The misinformation being passed along, could cost someone their life! Someone may get robbed at the ATM and actually try the backwards ATM code thing and die waiting for the police to show up. I ask myself if someone's ATM code happens to be 1331, how would the police, bank or ATM know they were being robbed? (yes, the technology is there, but not currently in use)

Stop before you forward! Spreading these of these types of emails are no better than the spread of rumors through gossip. There are many fact checking sites like snopes, hoax slayer or truth or fiction where you can check and see if it is true or not! In most cases, you can take a few keywords from the story, put them into your search engine and voila! You can also use the keywords along with the words hoax or urban legend.

Some claim to have already been checked on a site like snopes or truth or fiction. It is always good to check anyway. This helps protect your credibility if you do end up forwarding it. If you did not write it and you know your friend that forwarded it to you did not write it either, then please check! As always, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. If it sounds far-fetched, it probably is untrue. The best thing you can do is delete, but if you wonder, check. Only the facts forward please!