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I had just come home from a movie theater where I sat on a AIDs infected needle when someone stole my kidney!!!Mar 29 '00 (Updated Jun 07 '05) Write an essay on this topic.Don't you just love those forwarded emails from your friends that tell you to forward it to all of your friends online to make money, get prizes or perhaps help a needy child? Well I don't, I've actually come to hate these little messages and my friends online have been made well aware of this. Some have actually stopped sending them to me, but I still occasionally get one and my friend tells me "this one has to be true". They never are, not any of the ones I've received anyway. How do I know? Because I am one of those people who has to have proof before I'll send one of these little gems to my friends. So I very thoroughly research every one I get! Before I go any further with this editorial let me address two people personally: moonmoods_52 - scroll on down to the R darlin, I know you hate the long ones and this one's gonna be a heifer! HaggardFan - Thanks for the joke you sent me on this very subject, it was my inspiration! Now, with that out of the way, let's get to it. I guess I'll start with the Virus hoaxes because I actually received one today. The email was warning me not to open mail with the subject "It takes Guts to Say Jesus". This email warning tells me that if I open it, it will erase everything on my hard drive. Confirmed my IBM, more powerful than melissa, no known cure and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound! Oops, scratch that last part. Anyway, the virus warnings I don't mind so much. After all, this is how I got word of the melissa virus and that one was definitely true. These bogus virus warnings don't seem to do any damage, no one get's upset and they are fairly easy to check out for validity. Here are some URL's specifically for checking on virus warnings. The number one site is Symantec AntiVirus Research Center http://www.symantec.com A few more sites with great information http://www.mcafee.com http://www.stiller.com/myths.htm http://antivirus.about.com/library/blanhoax.htm http://karova.com/virus/hoax.htm http://www.911virusalert.com - with resources like how to tell if your computer is infected and a support clinic if it is infected. http://www.dogpile.com - just type in "computer virus information" and you get about 15 search engines worth of sites. Let's move on to the non-virus hoaxes. Most of us have seen the downright silly ones like the guy who woke up in a bathtub full of ice with a missing kidney and a note saying call 911(although this one has actually scared some younger webusers so maybe it's not too silly). The one about the government making KFC shorten it's name to initials because they used mutant chickens and it was illegal for them to use the word chicken(Oh Lord). My personal favorites are the ones about AOL, charging fees for instant messages(this one doesn't make sense) or the flashing Instant message that will pop up on you and steal your password. I could go on and on with examples but I'd never finish this editorial, there are just too many of these things out there to list. These are annoying at best and I'm hoping most people don't fall for them. A massive amount of chain letters are telling you that they can track the forwards on the emails and you can win anything from a big fat check to a huge supply of M&M's if you send it to as many friends as you can(sidenote:If you give up on the email and go buy your own M&M's, don't eat the green ones..I got an email that say's they make you horny). Let me make this clear especially to my personal email friends...There is no such thing as email tracking! As I tend to believe what Bill Gates tells me about computers, he is an expert in this sort of thing, here is the URL of proof on that subject: http://microsoft.com/billgates/columns/1998Essay/3-25col.htm Also check out what Rob Rosenburger has to say(this guy is pretty smart) http://www.kumite.com/myths The ones that I get extremely angry over are the ones that scare people or make them feel bad for someone. The chain letters from the sick child begging you to forward it to everyone you know because they get money for their "operation" for each forward, none of these are true. The most recent one that I got and actually the one that prompted me to dive into these hoaxes was about Kevin Archer - it's a letter supposedly from his mother telling the story of how her three year old son died from being stuck with a heroin needle in a McDonalds ball pit. This one affected me, I'm a parent of a two year old. I had no choice but to check it out, the email told me I could varify the story in the Midland Chronicle. Off to my trusty dogpile to type in Midland Chronicle and low and behold, a page full of websites telling me what a hoax this was. I was mad, this story scared me and it wasn't true. How many parents won't let their kids play at McDonalds because of this story? The ones who took it at face value and I don't blame them, not everyone is as anal retentive and cynical as I am and when you get something like this from a friend why shouldn't you trust that it's true? If everyone were like me, I wouldn't be angry...no one would believe these idiot stories without proof. Here are some more resources for the non-virus hoaxes: http://www.snopes.com http://www.urbanlegends.com http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/blhoax.htm I have to add the Department of Energy here, yes there is a government agency that attacks this problem...go figure. http://ciac.llnl.gov/CIAHoaxes.html If it's a newsgroup you want then check out this one Alt.folklore.urban If I haven't made my message clear yet, I'll spell it out. Don't forward anything you get of this nature to your friends without checking into it. You can't say you don't know where to check after reading this editorial. Just don't be lazy about it and make sure you get proof that it's true before you scare or annoy your friends. Believe me, they'll thank you for it and you may be doing them a service. I know I could have done without reading the story of the ball pit and I'm sure any parent who read it feels the same way. I'll end this rather lengthy editorial with a couple more URL's, these are mostly for dealing with the stuff you get from the real spammers. Resources for dealing with Spam http://www.mindworkshop.com/alchemy/nospam.html http://www.stentorian.com/antispam/index.html  |
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by texas-swede
