I don't understand why people continue to forward e-mails without verifying the validity of the claim being made. Two e-mails currently making their rounds involve barcodes and gift cards. The first one claims that you can avoid buying products that are made in China by reading the first three digits of the barcode. The e-mail provides a list of barcodes and countries. The first three digits can only tell you where the barcode itself was issued which is irrevlavent to where an item is made. The second e-mail tells you not to buy gift cards from certain stores that will be going out of business after January 1st. The list is fraught with misinformation and lies.
Before forwarding any of these friendly tips to 100 people, do everyone a favor and go to Snope.com or UrbanLegends.about.com first.
Gotta go, I've got business to handle. There's a rich widow from Nigeria that wants to give me $100 million if I just give her my bank account information.
1 comment:
I used to just delete such 'forward' e-mails and never commented to the sender. For about a year now, I've diligently fact-checked each forward (99% of these are false information) AND send a notice using "reply to all".
I figured eventually, there would be a noticeable impact - and there has been. 1) I am no longer on most of those group e-mails (yippie!) likely out of fear of embarrassment and 2) the senders are beginning to fact-check FIRST.
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