Hoax hilarity

There is a hoard of people out there who have uncontrollable e-mail forward syndrome. As soon as anything arrives in their inbox, their knee-jerk reaction is to forward it immediately to friends, family and any person they may have met once at a dinner party.

There are the children dying of cancer, and the organisations that promise to fork out $1 for every person this e-mail is forwarded to. There are stories of missing children, with photographs attached, and vague details about where they disappeared. There are warnings against flashing your car lights at unlit cars approaching in traffic, as this is a gang initiation challenge, and you will find yourself pursued by armed teenagers.

Overzealous citizens, exhibiting what they feel is reasonable caution, enthusiastically forward these e-mails to everyone in their address books, urging them to do the same. While these people might be painfully earnest in their intentions, they really would do well to assess the facts contained in the e-mail before forwarding it.

Hoaxers, like Nigerians, are prolific in their use of CAPITAL LETTERS and exclamation marks!

Georgina Guedes, journalist, ITWeb

The first sensible step is to check if there is a contact number, so that if you were to see the missing child, hear the recorded baby`s cry, see the gang car lights flashing, you could call the relevant person. If there aren`t any contact details, there isn`t much use in forwarding the mail in the first place. If there are contact details, rather make the call to verify the story before you send it on. These numbers have often been added to lend authenticity to the story, and have caused no end of trouble for organisations that know nothing about the threat outlined in the hoax mail.

Beyond that, hoaxers, like Nigerians, are prolific in their use of CAPITAL LETTERS and exclamation marks! Those that appeal to you to "Forward this to EVERYONE you know!" are unlikely to be genuine. "It could mean the difference between LIFE and DEATH" is another giveaway, as is the assertion that "it will only take a MINUTE of your time".

While I can just about manage to forgive the socially conscious forwarders of these kinds of e-mails, there are two links in the forwarding chain that irritate me beyond belief. The first is, obviously, the originator. What are these people thinking - it`s fun to get lots of people to be afraid if they find different coloured tin cans outside their houses? That the whole world needs to unite in brotherhood against bonsai kittens?

The second type of person I detest are those who receive the mail from overseas, with very obvious references to international locations and phone numbers, and then alter them so that they seem to have local relevance.

Like the people who originate the hoax, these people have no real way of assessing the impact of what they have done, so they can`t be sniggering at the online panic they are creating. Is there some kind of undercover hoax network with regional offices all over the world that adapts and changes international hoax releases for use in their own country?

Snopes is a particularly reliable hoax buster, with a record of just about every bit of forwarded e-mail nonsense on file. The Snopes Webmasters tell you if it is true or not, and even go as far as researching its possible origins.

But, be warned, browsing the site can shatter a lot of illusions. Most of the Darwin Awards aren`t real, none of the Stella Awards are, your teeth will not dissolve if left overnight in a glass of Coke, and no amateur palaeontologist has been digging up his back garden and sending Barbie doll heads to the Smithsonian Institute for verification as fossils.

This column was spurred by an e-mail I received from a friend complaining about the silliness of the American state legal system, which sent a farmer a letter instructing him to stop damming up the river that ran across his property. If he didn`t comply with the request to remove the dam within the specified timeframe, he would be expected to pay a fine.

The letter was included in the e-mail, as was the farmer`s response. He started out: "I am the legal owner and a couple of beavers are in the (state unauthorised) process of constructing and maintaining two wood 'debris` dams across the outlet stream of my spring pond."

He then informed the state that the beavers "would be highly offended [if] you call their skilful use of natural building materials 'debris`". He added that he didn`t feel that the state could lay a claim against the beavers without providing them with adequate legal representation. He went on to encourage the state to do something about the health risk caused by bears which were "actually defecating in our woods".

This letter is, delightfully, genuine.