Do you always point out to people if they've been victims of internet hoaxes?
By vivasuzi
@vivasuzi (4127)
United States
February 10, 2010 9:37pm CST
I hate spoof emails, fake "warnings" and false forwards. Everytime someone sends me a "very important" email forward, I always go straight to the net to look it up. Snopes.com is perfect for this - tells you what is true and what is false with info explaining where the hoaxes originated from.
OK SO, whenever I get one of these, and I find out it is a hoax, I reply to the person with a link showing them that it is a fake email. Well, that is what I usually intend to do. But lately I've found I'm too lazy to do this for everything. Especially since many of these are circulating around Facebook at the speed of light!!!
Examples: An "emergency Amber Alert" that was going around Facebook was a Hoax. I told my friend so she'd take it down before others could copy paste it. She deleted it instantly soon as I showed her the link explaining it was a hoax.
The second example is one I just saw. My friend is joining a group saying "NO! I WILL NOT PAY $3.99/MONTH TO USE FACEBOOKK STARTING JULY 9, 2010! JOIN". Of course, I looked this one up too. It is a HOAX and lie as well. Facebook does not plan to start charging. But you know what, I'm too lazy to warn my friends who are joining this.
Basically, sometimes it's not even worth the effort to do the research and warn people that they have been victims of Hoax emails because... well I get tired of the fact that people can't do this for themselves! So many people sign up for things, or forward on emails, without even taking one minute to see if it's true! Does the internet really make people that gullible that they believe everything they read??
Ok so what do you do? If you see something you suspect is a Hoax forward, do you look it up and warn the person of the hoax? or Do you ignore it? Most of the time I'm trying to help my friends see that they should research this stuff before posting it, but lately there has just been too many hoaxes going around that I don't have the energy to reply to them all.
1 person likes this
6 responses
@newtalent (1112)
• United States
12 Feb 10
It can be tedious. I tell my my friends make sure its true before forwarding because I am a deleter. Even if i know its from you. Snopes is awesome. I do try to inform them if I know something is false and can harm my or their pc. But you cannot possible keep up with it. The internet is just like the tabloids on the shelf.. There is always someone that will pass it on because they believe it to be true without checking the source. Its like we were programmed to believe what we read is because its printed.I so agree its a never ending cycle and I want off of it.
@vivasuzi (4127)
• United States
17 Feb 10
I would hope that at some point in the future people as a whole would start to realize they can't believe everything they read! I also notice many people do not realize that many "news" sources now-a-days are actually written by regular people and not researchers or journalist. So you can't even trust every news story you read.
Maybe one day the internet will balance out and people will finally start to realize that most this stuff they are forwarding on is just a bunch of junk mail.
@vivasuzi (4127)
• United States
17 Feb 10
Yep I get what you are saying - it usually is the same people! They don't learn :-D I ignore most of them but if it's something saying "danger!!" or "warning!!" I feel compelled to tell them there really isn't any danger that needs to be passed around.
@pyewacket (43903)
• United States
11 Feb 10
I always am getting those "dire" emails too from my friends and I know they mean well, but they really should look it up to see if it's valid. I just got one today about an ingredient in many cough syrups, etc that has serious effects and that any product with the ingredient was recalled.....it WAS true but by looking at snopes.com it says it was an old, outdated email warning of something like five years, that the particular ingredient had been taken out of the various medications long time ago. So I emailed my friend and told her, but yeah, sure wish people would look up the validity of these warnings themselves
1 person likes this
@vivasuzi (4127)
• United States
11 Feb 10
That is the funny thing about these warnings, I'll get the same one years later! Amazing how things filter through the internet.
I usually tell people if the "hoax" is something that is gonna make them worried, like your cough syrup example. But I got tired of telling people if they are just dumb silly things being passed around.
@LaDeBoheme (2004)
• United States
11 Feb 10
I have made it very clear to friends to NOT forward any of that e-mail crap to me. I will not hesitate to filter such e-mails to my Junk Mail folder. On the rare occasion I have gotten some stupid warning or rumor, I reply to all with the snopes link and reiterate this is why they need to quit sending me these stupid urban legends. It has worked very well. I've even had people say to me "I checked it out on snopes first".
1 person likes this
@vivasuzi (4127)
• United States
11 Feb 10
:) I have told some people to stop forwarding me stuff, but most i just read and delete.
I tell people all the time that I found it on snopes to be a lie, and they still forget to check the NEXT time they get an email. I guess too many people just believe everything they are forwarded. Your method seems to be working, so I'm just gonna keep on telling people to check snopes first :)
@tdiamond33 (330)
• Canada
12 Feb 10
There are a large amount of hoaxes and scams floating around the internet, especially in today's society. Everyday I check my email and I receive about ten to twelve messages just in scam sites. I make it a routine to clear them immediately. Now I can tell if a certain email is fake or genuine. Sometimes these emails sneak through my spam filter, but I still can detect the hoax. When you surf the net, that's when it gets pretty overwhelming at times.
@minotaur87 (769)
• Singapore
13 Feb 10
Yeah, a lot of people thought that they know some internal news so they just mass forward the email to everyone they know of. But actually, most of the time, these emails are just rumours. If those providers going to do anything massive, they would sure have announced it in the news. So another venue to check for the validity of the emails is to check the news websites. Usually, I don't bother to read through the whole email before I delete them.
