Bogus Emails and How to Stop them

For a couple of years now I have been blogging about chain emails, especially the type that:

- come from a friend of a friend;
- have been forwarded numerous times;
- are about politics, religion, or patriotism; and/or
- contain right-wing conspiracy theories or similar fringe ideas

I really enjoy debunking these things, and I did so again yesterday in "Friend of a Friend Has No Shame." After reading that post, a couple of people asked for pointers on how they too can help expose and ridicule the crazy, pretentious, or malicious messages that populate their in-boxes. For what they're worth, here are my thoughts:

1. Read the excellent article, "That Chain E-mail Your Friend Sent to You Is (Likely) Bogus. Seriously." at factcheck.org (see link below). [Some of the following ideas come from that article, which was posted March 18, 2008.]
2. Be suspicious of any message the author of which is anonymous or supposedly a famous person.
3. Be wary if the message is full of exclamation points or errors in spelling and grammar.
4. If there's math involved, check the math yourself.
5. If the message asserts that is it true, it probably isn't. (For example: "This is NOT a hoax!")
6. Finally, as the factcheck.org article suggests, the more times something is forwarded, the more likely it is to be false.

Don't be gullible. Use a healthy dose of skepticism, and double check everything before you forward it. To do so, check out any references the author cites, or use one or more of these links for verification:

factcheck.org
snopes.com
truthorfiction.com
urbanlegends.com

Of course the easiest way to deal with these silly hoaxes is this: just hit the "delete" key.