Tuesday, April 25, 2006

e-robots

Ok, this is not going to be an entertaining post, but I wanted to take this opportunity to plug two websites that I use quite often. In today's time, we rely so much on e-mail, blogging, myspace, etc...whatever mode of electronic conversation you prefer. Because we place so much confidence in e-mail, we tend to believe anything we receive via e-mail. I would like to take this time to introduce, or re-introduce, you to a couple of websites that I strongly urge you to use before mindlessly forwarding an e-mail.

If you go to either www.snopes.com or www.truthorfiction.com, you will see a search field on both of those pages. Type a few words from the body of the e-mail you are verifying and click search. In most cases, either of these sites will have a version of the e-mail and will explain whether or not the e-mail is true. They describe their answers and give links to references concerning whatever the topic of the e-mail is.

So, before you send me an e-mail about how to lower gas prices (I've received that one 4 times in the past 2 days), how to help a kid with epilepsy by simply forwarding an e-mail, receiving free coupons for Applebee's or Starbucks, signing a petition to keep religion on TV, or whatever other life-changing information your e-mail might contain, PLEASE consider checking the validity of it on one or both of these websites. I have made it my personal goal to spread the word about these two resources, and I hope you will do the same. Maybe one day there will be more people who actually check what they blindly forward than there are people who resemble e-mail robots by clicking forward every time they receive an e-mail.

4 comments:

  1. this entry is sooo right up your alley. very true. you keep changing your blog title, so its called the wrong thing on my page...

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  2. sounds like you are just as annoyed at myspace bulletins as I am. I think I've receieved at least 2 or 3 of each one that you described. I hate getting suckered into reading those things. Then I fall for the ones that I think might actually work, but no...they don't. Grrr.

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  3. preach on, preach on, preach on...it does get a little awkward when the forward comes from the vice-president of your department. "um...ma'am, that email you sent about checking underneath your car, around the gas pumps, in the handle, over the river and thru the woods everytime you stop for gas...isn't true. But thanks for caring about whether or not I get AIDS :)"

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