Hoax Inoculation

Posted by Cyn

The most wide­spread virus on the inter­net is the gulli­bil­ity virus — okay, so it’s more of a meme. In any case, it’s a major nui­sance, and sucks up ridicu­lous amounts of time and energy due to peo­ple for­ward­ing non­sense emails or wor­ry­ing about virus hoaxes. Those of us who are on many mail­ing lists or have many cor­re­spon­dents end up see­ing these stu­pid things umpteen times, and they get more annoy­ing every time they appear in our inboxes. Please, stop. Now. Before you for­ward any­thing please ask your­self these questions:

  1. How sure am I that this is true? Have I ver­i­fied it with a reli­able source? (Hear­ing about it on the Rush Lim­baugh show does not count.) Go to some author­ity that you absolutely know to be trust­wor­thy and rel­e­vant to the sub­ject at hand. If it’s a med­ical alert sort of thing, check it through a med­ical pro­fes­sional or the web site for the Amer­i­can Med­ical Asso­ci­a­tion or a sim­i­lar organization.
  2. Who wrote this thing? If it’s been for­warded mul­ti­ple times, it’s highly unlikely that it’s true.
  3. Would you believe this infor­ma­tion if you saw it writ­ten on a bath­room wall? For­warded emails have the same level of credibility.
  4. There are cer­tain char­ac­ter­is­tics shared among almost all email hoaxes. Exces­sive use of excla­ma­tion marks and delib­er­ately alarm­ing lan­guage are just a few of them.
  5. The fact that some­thing has been stated on a web site instead of an email does not make it any more likely to be true. I could put up a web site in just a cou­ple of min­utes that stated, in very author­i­ta­tive lan­guage, that spam­mers have caused the hole in the ozone layer. Check the sources.
  6. I don’t care if some­one else said he checked it out. You need to check it out. I don’t care if it’s from your mother, unless you know for a fact that it’s a story com­ing from her per­sonal, first-​​hand expe­ri­ence. I get urban leg­ends from my rel­a­tives all the time, and that doesn’t make me any more likely to believe them.
  7. If what you’re for­ward­ing is a virus warn­ing, check it at Com­puter Virus Myths or Syman­tec before send­ing it on. Even if you got the mes­sage from some­one who should be reli­able, check it out. I worked in the devel­op­ment depart­ment of a very well-​​known inter­net com­pany where we reg­u­larly received “alerts” from the MIS depart­ment that were almost always virus hoaxes.
  8. For­ward­ing emails to a great many peo­ple will not accom­plish any­thing but fill­ing up mail­boxes, wast­ing time, and annoy­ing every­one. It will not save women in Afghanistan or help you earn money or get free mer­chan­dise. Even when there are legit­i­mate polit­i­cal or social issues at hand, peo­ple who want to get alerts on those sub­jects have sub­scribed to mail­ing lists for that pur­pose or will seek the infor­ma­tion out on web sites. They don’t need to get them from you.
  9. Chain let­ters don’t make any­one feel loved. If you want some­one to know that you’re think­ing about him, pick up the phone and call him, or send her a per­sonal email, or snail mail a card or let­ter. But don’t for­ward a chain letter.

At the very least, take a minute and check with these sites that spe­cial­ize in debunk­ing hoaxes and urban legends:

Permalink | June 21st, 2012

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