(Last change: 12 January 1999.)<\/p>\r\n\r\n
How many times have you received email that says \u201cplease forward this to everyone you know\u201d? How many times have you forwarded such email and later discovered that you\u2019d helped perpetrate a hoax, or learned that the email became outdated two years before?<\/p>\r\n
Any time that you receive much-forwarded email telling you to do something that seems a little odd, or warning you of a problem, try to verify the information given before<\/em> following the instructions or forwarding the email. It can save a lot of trouble (and sometimes money!) later.<\/p>\r\n The Net allows hoaxes and urban legends<\/a> to reach hundreds of thousands of people within hours; it\u2019s often (as demonstrated by the durability of the Craig Shergold<\/a> business) difficult or impossible for the truth to catch up with the rumor. It\u2019s especially tough to contain such items because well-meaning people like to tell everyone they know about potential dangers and about ways to do good. But it\u2019s really best to resist the temptation to tell anyone<\/em> these things until you\u2019ve checked up on the info yourself.<\/p>\r\n Here are some of the general types of false or distorted information that most commonly get distributed without verification:<\/p>\r\n and so on. A good rule of thumb is that if you don\u2019t personally know the original<\/em> originator of the message, it may well have been distorted in transmission\u2014remember the game \u201cTelephone\u201d? Information tends to get garbled as it\u2019s passed along, even if it was true originally. (It also tends to get outdated as time goes on...)<\/p>\r\n Here\u2019s another good rule of thumb: if you receive a piece of email which demands that you panic without thinking, it\u2019s probably not a good idea to follow instructions. This is particularly applicable to the last three types of commonly forwarded mail on the above list.<\/p>\r\n Before you forward anything to a large number of people, stop and think<\/strong>. Do you know for sure the email is true? Does everyone you\u2019re writing to need to know about it? If the answer to either question is \u201cno,\u201d you might reconsider sending it out.<\/p>\r\n This page is not meant as an attack on anyone. Forwarding important email is something most of us do at one time or another. I\u2019d just like to see people make sure of an item\u2019s accuracy before passing it on.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n
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