170 Spoons

Verify Your Email - It May Be A Hoax

WHY? We get unbelievable and/or shocking emails passed to us from friends that just aren’t true. Verify them!

It’s just our nature to want to be “in the know” and to share unbelievable stories with our friends. Thankfully with email, we can share these stories with hundreds of our friends at once. And why not? It was already shared with hundreds of people we don’t know (just scroll down the email and see all the forwards)!

There’s nothing wrong with sharing great stuff with friends, but before you do, just verify it to make sure it’s true or not. To do this quickly there is a website that needs to become your best friend and weapon against squashing internet hoaxes: snopes.com.

Here’s a few fun hoaxes that have been emailed around that snopes squashed:

• Walt Disney World is suing the US Air Force
• Register your cellphone on a “Do Not Call List” to avoid telemarketers
• Baby carrots are really chlorine-soaked, deformed carrots

The gem about snopes.com is that sometimes they’ll tell you the stuff that is true like:

• It costs more money to make a penny than it’s worth
• Coca-Cola used to have cocaine in it’s original recipe
• The Titanic was part of a trilogy of ships built: the Olympic, Titanic, and Gigantic

So before you believe everything unbelievable and forward it on to your email list, just double-check it on a reliable website like snopes.com. You can also get email updates or RSS updates from snopes.

What’s your favorite unbelievable or shocking story email you’ve received lately? If someone will share their story first, I’ve got a fun one I’ll share in the comments.