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Sunday, March 28, 2010

True or False?

True or False?
The internet is a wonderful source of information and, unfortunately, mis-information.  As a test, I searched snopes.com for "Obama".  There were 100 entries.  62 entries were false, 13 entries were true , 20 were a mixture, and 5 were undetermined.  If the 20 mixtures are split evenly between true and false, the final reckoning is:   72% false and 23% true.  I have seen other estimates on internet validity ranging as high as 90% invalid. Over the years I have received several dozen  virus warnings.  Only one was real.  All the rest were hoaxes.
 
Here are some indicators that an email is bogus:
Ø      It seems to be unbelievable.
Ø      It says "you won't find this in any news media".
Ø      It says "next week" or "last month" but it is undated.
Ø      It refers to someone by rank or office but does not actually have a full name attached.
Ø      It offers something for nothing.  "If you forward this 10 people, you will receive…..
Ø      "Sign this petition."  Email petitions are worthless.  These are tracers in search of email addresses.
Ø      "Send this to ___ people including the person who sent it to you" is also a tracer.  Tracers give you a lot of spam, but no reward. 
Ø      "This is the worst virus ever."  (How do they know.)
Ø      "This was checked by snopes.com" does not mean snopes found it to be true.  Please refer to the 72% and 23% above.
 
Some of the best websites for checking validity:
v     Snopes.com
v     Truthorfiction.com
v     Hoax-slayer.com
v     Politifact.com
 

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