Forwarding Email Hoaxes

The weekend is finally here.  We are sitting at home kicked back checking the fifty emails we did not have a chance to check at work today while hearing "Mommy, Mommy" in the background!  What fun!  Among the emails are several that begin with "Fw:" which means someone finds us worthy of recieving a very important forwarded email.  We are touched that our friends and colleagues think of us, yet we eventually realize the email about Walmart giving out free gift cards is actually a hoax.  While we enjoy the forwarded jokes and inspirational messages if time allows, many forwarded emails are quite often fake petitions that need to be signed, baby car seats beside the road luring women for gang initiations that never happened, prayer requests for children who do not even exist, etc.

I thought I would take a few minutes on my blog to introduce Snopes.com.  What is Snopes?  This is the place to go if you have a question about the validity of an email.  Please take a moment to check out this site's credibility by visiting http://www.snopes.com/info/articles.asp.  You will find Snopes has been recognized as a reputable fact-checking service by ABC News, CNN, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Reader's Digest, and many more.  It is so important to check out information in our emails before passing it along.  If you receive an email about a car seat beside the road, simply go to Snopes.com and check it out.  There is a search box at the top to type in the search, and a true or false response is returned with sources cited and the email explained in detail, along with the many variations floating around in cyberspace.  As educated individuals, it is so important to realize that everything in our inbox is not true.  I guess it is the information specialist in me, but I have a strong feeling that if we know the information is false, there is no way we would continue to forward them.

I know that so many of us would be embarassed and feel almost violated once we realize
the email that found its way into our hearts...
the email that took time away from our children to read and forward...
the email that truly tugged at our heartstrings...
the email that resorted to rage and calling up a political official...
the email that brought tears to our eyes...
the very email that we took our precious time to forward to our dearest friends and colleagues...
is actually a hoax that has been circulating since 1975.

Hope you find this information useful in your future emailing!  Have a great weekend!