Have you heard of www.snopes.com
Here is a very good resource to know about. If you are like me trusted friends and family whose hearts are in the right place forward you all sorts of crazy or scary e-mails all the time. Yes their hearts are in the right place but their brains need to catch up at times.
These e-mails take several forms and usually advise you to forward them to everyone on your e-mail list. I recently got one that carried a warning from a local Chief of Police about the MS-13 gang. It was marked verified by each person that forwarded it:
Administrators,
Information just received is that the gang MS-13 is currently initiating new gang members and an incident has already occurred. Please share with your staff. The initiation is as follows, several gang members are in a car and do a slow moving tap (accident bump) to your car as you get out to investigate they shoot you.
This is not a joke. If you are involved in a minor accident I strongly recommend you go to a well populated area or lit area if at night and call the police. If any additional information is put out I will share it with you.
Name removed
Chief of Police
Department Removed
Address removed
Schertz, TX 78154
Office: (210) 945-6190
Fax: (210) 945-6193
The only problem with this whole scenario is that it is an Urban Legend that has been around in one form or another since the 80's when it was the Bloods and Crips driving around with no lights after dark. When you flash your bright lights they will kill you.
Somewhere along the line someone made an effort to make it more official by adding the name and contact information for the Chief of Police for a local department. However a quick check with snopes revealed it to be nothing more than an urban legend.
These emails can be warnings, Amber alerts, Or my personal favorite Satirical pieces someone published on the internet that get circulated and often have racial or other stereotypes as the basis. For example here's two headlines I've received in the past month:
"KKK endorses Barrack Obama"
"Federal Judge Bans Black Women From Naming their Children"
Instead of just automatically forwarding these e-mails take a minute to verify them first it very easy to do. Just go to www.snopes.com and search for the information if it is in fact true they will tell you that and those true ratings are few and far between. Also don't trust that it has been verified, verify it yourself. Almost every one of these e-mails claim to have been verified through Snopes but when you go there it's a different story.
Why do you want to verify this stuff first? Well save your friends some panic, and in some cases free up emergency services resources. People get these warning e-mails and immediately call police departments to verify it, report imagined leads or find out why something isn't being done to halt or solve imaginary crime waves.
These e-mails take several forms and usually advise you to forward them to everyone on your e-mail list. I recently got one that carried a warning from a local Chief of Police about the MS-13 gang. It was marked verified by each person that forwarded it:
Administrators,
Information just received is that the gang MS-13 is currently initiating new gang members and an incident has already occurred. Please share with your staff. The initiation is as follows, several gang members are in a car and do a slow moving tap (accident bump) to your car as you get out to investigate they shoot you.
This is not a joke. If you are involved in a minor accident I strongly recommend you go to a well populated area or lit area if at night and call the police. If any additional information is put out I will share it with you.
Name removed
Chief of Police
Department Removed
Address removed
Schertz, TX 78154
Office: (210) 945-6190
Fax: (210) 945-6193
The only problem with this whole scenario is that it is an Urban Legend that has been around in one form or another since the 80's when it was the Bloods and Crips driving around with no lights after dark. When you flash your bright lights they will kill you.
Somewhere along the line someone made an effort to make it more official by adding the name and contact information for the Chief of Police for a local department. However a quick check with snopes revealed it to be nothing more than an urban legend.
These emails can be warnings, Amber alerts, Or my personal favorite Satirical pieces someone published on the internet that get circulated and often have racial or other stereotypes as the basis. For example here's two headlines I've received in the past month:
"KKK endorses Barrack Obama"
"Federal Judge Bans Black Women From Naming their Children"
Instead of just automatically forwarding these e-mails take a minute to verify them first it very easy to do. Just go to www.snopes.com and search for the information if it is in fact true they will tell you that and those true ratings are few and far between. Also don't trust that it has been verified, verify it yourself. Almost every one of these e-mails claim to have been verified through Snopes but when you go there it's a different story.
Why do you want to verify this stuff first? Well save your friends some panic, and in some cases free up emergency services resources. People get these warning e-mails and immediately call police departments to verify it, report imagined leads or find out why something isn't being done to halt or solve imaginary crime waves.
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Comments (19)
Cheryl Baumgartner12
Medical Billing/Coding/Insurance
All of the listed sites are good resources to check for scams
Hemant Desai4
Philosopher, Thinker, Speaker, Writer
Oh good ... some place where one can find for sure what is what and what is NOT. Thank you for sharing.
Cheryl Baumgartner12
Medical Billing/Coding/Insurance
Jennifer good to see another rabbit stick it's head out of the hole! it's been too quiet around here :-)
Jennifer Underwood11
Promoter
Sorry, I have popped in..but never has been a good time to comment.
Snopes is very good site to go to. Thanks cheryl for the update!~
Cheryl Baumgartner12
Medical Billing/Coding/Insurance
I just hope that this can cut down on some of the garbage that keeps circulating.
Sameer S.5
Professional
great ideas
thanks
Cheryl Baumgartner12
Medical Billing/Coding/Insurance
Thanks for the link Jeff I went and checked it out it's going to take some time to wade through that one it is overflowing with scams!
Jeff Greene8
Online Marketing Specialist/Consultant
http://www.worldwidescam.info
Is a registered non-profit. They have lists of scams. scammers photos, a great newletter and a long standing positive presence on the Internet... free to join, too!
Cheryl Baumgartner12
Medical Billing/Coding/Insurance
Yes Snopes is great, even if you just read it for the entertainment value
Jean DAndrea7
Retired
Stopes is a great site, and have lists of many scams, chain letters, etc.
I've made it a rule to never forward anything - this stuff just goes into the
"delete" area, no matter how heartrending it appears.
No doubt I do sometimes miss a real message, but the majority of
them are just scams, playing on the feelings of the softhearted.
Cheryl Baumgartner12
Medical Billing/Coding/Insurance
Thanks Lisa
Lisa Lomas11
I actually know there is much Rubbish similar, I am glad you did a explanation on this, just going off to stumble it and more!
Thanks for sharing
Cheryl Baumgartner12
Medical Billing/Coding/Insurance
Thanks Garnet. And thank you too Jeff. Any resource is good, the main thing is to research it first.
Not Here8
just want my account deleted
Snopes is a great place to check this CRAP out...even if they did steal their slogan from Reba!
scambusters.org is another one...
Cheryl Baumgartner12
Medical Billing/Coding/Insurance
http://www.truthorfiction.com
Another good resource to check with on those e-mail rumors!
Jeff Greene8
Online Marketing Specialist/Consultant
Good advice can be had at Break The Chain. Org:
http://www.breakthechain.org/
Nobody actually realizes how much this junk affects productivity... Billions of dollars are spent fighting junkmail and refuting Urban Legends that are spread about businesses...
This is money that could be better spent on small business growth, namely our businesses!
Governments and Big Corp can't and won't throw us small fish the 'Crumbs" because they always will have 'Productivity" expenses to divert
Cheryl Baumgartner12
Medical Billing/Coding/Insurance
I also did a blog on how to correctly forward e-mails. It's around here somewhere.
Jeff Greene8
Online Marketing Specialist/Consultant
Also it's a very good practice NEVER to forward ANY email directly from your address book...
There simply are too many virus spreading schemes attached to these "Social Engineering" attempts... Visits to Snopes, and Smart Computing/Tech support can help us all become better at stemming the flow of malware, as well as Urban Legends... Both of which will never cease, I'm afraid...