Re: What’s Wrong With Forwarding Urban Legends, Chain Letters or Hoaxes?

Of course now that I’ve blogged about urban legends I get another one sent to me today 🙂 This one sounds more believable (to some) because it purports to come from the South Australian Police Department.

This is what I replied with today.

This is what’s known as an Urban Legend or hoax. The story has been around since about 1967 in various forms. This is just one of the latest forms with local information put in to make it sound more real. By sending on these type of emails the hoax is being kept alive. You can read more about it here http://www.snopes.com/horrors/madmen/backseat.asp

Also all this junk email which is sent around clogs and slows down email servers giving us users a slower service and costing Internet Service Providers money.

Please check these emails out before sending them on, the websites www.snopes.com and www.breakthechain.org are good sites to check.

2 thoughts on “Re: What’s Wrong With Forwarding Urban Legends, Chain Letters or Hoaxes?

  • February 23, 2008 at 4:06 am
    Permalink

    I always reply to hoaxes after a quick google, but for some reason some people just don’t get it.

    What really gets annoying for me is people who send on those ‘be nice to people’-type emails and particularly the ‘send this on to 20 others and you’ll get good luck’ emails. I know that the originators of those probably had good intentions but I have to spend time reading it.

    One person I know sent so many of these on to me that after three or so warnings I added a mail filter, which is really quite sad seeing how said person was a friend I had met at a Christian youth camp.

    Reply
  • February 23, 2008 at 11:59 am
    Permalink

    Hi
    I’ve seen people asked to leave a mailing list because they wouldn’t stop sending hoaxes etc to the list.

    I try and teach my students as much as possible about email etiquette but, as you say, they don’t always get it.

    Reply

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