Anyone who's been on the internet for any length of time knows, hopefully, that not everything that goes around on the internet is absolutely true. In fact, of the things that tell you to "forward to everyone you know", over 95% of them will be hoaxes, outdated, or worse.
Fortunately, there's a way to check such things BEFORE sending them on "just in case". Simply go to one of the urban legend sites (my favorite is www.snopes.com, but there are several), which I recommend you keep bookmarked, and check whatever has hit your Inbox - again, BEFORE SENDING IT ON OR POSTING IT TO YOUR BLOG. (I can't emphasize that enough.)
Why is this such an issue? Well, it makes you look foolish when you forward on something that everyone else knows is such an old hoax that it has a long, grey beard, for one thing. For another, it uses up bandwidth that could be better used. It's annoying to those who receive these things who know better. It encourages the people who write them and send them out just to see how many people will be tricked into forwarding them on to do it even more often.
But there's a more important reason that I just saw demonstrated on our local news.
There's a hoax going around right now involving traffic laws being changed on July 1, with outrageous fines being applied. Mildly annoying, but easily debunked with 30 seconds on snopes. However, a lot of people aren't checking before they send it on as fact; a lot are sending it on "just in case, what can it hurt" and then checking after they've let the genie out of the bottle or the cat out of the bag - or not checking at all. The result, here in Texas (one of the versions is for Texas, another for California, who knows if there's versions for other states), is that the Texas Department of Public Safety, which has much better use for its time and resources, is fielding thousands of calls asking about it, to the point that they have put a notice on the news that this is a hoax and PLEASE don't pass it on, in hopes of stemming the tide and getting back to taking care of real business. This is costing us our tax dollars, folks.
That is the kind of thing that "just in case, what can it hurt" forwarding can cause.
So, please, when you get something in your mail that wants you to send it to everyone you know and their dog, pause a moment. Check it out beforehand. You'll learn, soon enough, if you do this consistently, that you don't even have to check, you'll recognize the hoaxes when someone sends them on to you "just in case," and just hit delete.
Thank you.
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