Admit it, you've been a victim, pretty much anyone who sends email has been a victim, hopefully only once though. What is this I write of you ask? Spoofs, hoaxes, and urban legends!
Sure, you meant well, you got that email with all the caps and bolded letters and exclamation points and honest to Pete those AIDS infested needles sticking out of all those theater seats could be dangerous! You felt it your duty to warn every single person in your email list to check extra carefully before they sit down to watch the latest Harry Potter installment. After all, if it saves just one person right?
Now if you have polite friends they may just ignore you. But if you have a friend like me, who feels compelled to point out the error of your ways, they may scoff at you and send you the actual link on Snopes pointing out what a sham it is. I admit I probably have irritated more than a few friends with my brash warnings to check these things out before they fill up my inbox with them but that's just the way I am. I can't help it. These faux warnings are as annoying as a typo. You may feel it's your mission to warn folks about the woman who became sealed to an airline toilet for 2 hours but I feel it's my mission to get these silly mass emails to stop!
If you're advanced enough to search out blogs and read their articles I certainly hope you're beyond the stage of sending your friends all those ~warning~ emails but in case you aren't, consider this your warning - cut it out!!
As far as I know, Snopes is the most popular and possibly the most reliable place to check out whether or not that email you're about to send is legit. Another fun aspect to Snopes is not just using it as a basis to yell at your friends for sending you lame emails. Did you know that the so called "Twinkie Defense" was just that? "So called?" It never happened! Learn all about it here.
Another good site is about.com's Urban Legends and Folklore. Take their fun quiz and see whether or not you can spot a fake photo. They include that picture of that man holding the giant cat. (Btw, if someone actually knows how to make a giant cat picture I want to know. I have an 8 ½ pound orange tabby and he'd love to be able to send a picture of himself like that around.) He has always rather fancied himself a big tom cat (he's actually a momma's-boy-indoor-cat) but I don't want to crush his dreams.
From your friends at McAfee an extensive list of email hoaxes.
This urban legend site includes the story about how eating pop rocks and drinking pop will cause your stomach to explode and this is what caused Mikey from the Life cereal commercials to die. (I totally believed that one when I was a kid.) That and the Bubble Yum bubble gum contained spider eggs.
On a more serious note: there are a lot of jerks out there who would be more than happy to clean out your bank account and ruin your credit if they could get their grubby mitts on your personal information so check out these websites on how to avoid the big stuff like phishing and identity theft:
Identity Theft.org
Privacy Rights Clearinghouse
Anti-Phishing Working Group
OnGuard Online
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