I heard a rumor...

So if you don’t already know it, not everything you see or hear on the Internet is on the up and up. There are a lot of bad things out there just like in the real world. I’ll get into some of the nastier stuff in a different area but right now what we are talking about is disinformation, urban legends, scams and the like. First off there are many other sites that do a much better job of and I have listed them at the bottom of the page. This is more of a list of email rumors that have hit my personal attention either from friends, family, customers, or other associates.

Bottom line is knowing what an email urban legend/scam is when you see one. First forget about who it came from, I once had a VP of marketing pass a message around with a really nasty virus in it. Many opened the attachment because of who she was, not taking into consideration how strange the message was. People are people so be aware. Most of these messages do not include references to reliable web sites, and do not include a full date (day month and year) or any other information to ground them. As a quick check run the first few words of any claim through one of the major websites and find out if is on any of the disinformation sites. Do yourself a favor and don’t come across as someone that passes this kind of disinformation around.

My short list...

Just one of many eBay scams

Your cell phone number is being given out to every telemarketer and you will charged for the calls!!! (false)

The major disinformation sites

http://urbanlegends.about.com

http://www.snopes.com

http://www.truthorfiction.com