Don’t Believe Everything You Read (See or Hear) Article by Fred Kahn
One of the things I talk about in my lectures on internet fraud is whether or not people should be required to pass a test before they are allowed to use the internet. It has become my strong belief that the internet is a dangerous tool in the hands of those who are ill prepared to understand its potential for misuse. I believe that an unskilled person using computer on the internet is more dangerous than a teenager driving car.
Now I certainly don't want to offend anyone, but merely to point out that people must act equally responsibly when driving a car or passing along information they read on the internet.
I receive many e-mails from friends and acquaintances warning me about the actions of companies, individuals, politicians and plastic water bottles; spam, scams, computer viruses and such. Before I react (or over react as the case may be) I do a little research of my own. After all, there is so much misinformation being disseminated on the internet, (as well as radio, TV and in the newspapers) more than ever, people must verify the validity of the source of any and all information. Check yahoo, Google, Bing, Ask, The Encyclopedia, etc. Make a phone call or send an e-mail to your elected officials or to the person in question and find out all the information you can on the particular subject you are reacting to. You will be surprised at the depth to which out-and-out lies are being spread on a whole myriad of subjects, usually for some ulterior purpose but sometimes out of just plain old ignorance.
Case-in-point; There have been many articles recently questioning the safety of plastic water bottles. After doing some research of my own I found many opinions offered by many (unqualified) people. These were all opinions. Not one article referenced any study done by any qualified agency. Now remember Fred's rule number 13; Opinions are like arm pits, everyone has more than one and they usually stink! However, and here is where the disinformation (yes, I said Dis and not Mis) comes in; some people read these articles and panic. OMG, if I drink water from plastic bottles, my left testicle will fall off! Then they start e-mailing everyone they know telling them to stop drinking water from plastic. As it turns out, this rumor was started by a company that aluminum drinking containers and profited handsomely by people unwittingly spreading these rumors.
To make a short story long, the bottom line which has always been true "Don't believe everything you read (see or hear) and don’t go passing around something you heard unless you verify that it’s true.
Part Two:
There are many people forwarding e-mail petitions purported to be from some reputable organization and asking you to add your name and e-mail address to the list and then to forward it to ten of your friends. Supposedly, when the list reaches some number such as one-hundred people it will be sent to a government official as a signed petition. There is usually some e-mail link in the petition that the one-hundredth person is supposed to click on to send the whole list to some place like The Whitehouse.
Now upon further investigation of the latest e-mail petition I received, it appears that this entire petition is nothing more than a Phishing* expedition. In case you are not familiar with the term "PHISHING", it refers to an attempt to obtain peoples personal and/or financial information. The e-mail address was actually a company that sells peoples e-mails addresses to marketing companies, scam artists, etc. Please don't sign petitions like this and NEVER, EVER click on a link in a link in an e-mail to connect to a website. Go to the website directly by typing it into your address bar or in the To: box in your e-mail, NOT on the link in the email you received. E-mail links can be faked very easily!
Now in case you are wondering what prompted this tirade, it is a response to a recent e-mail I received warning me that Congress was going to give social security benefits to illegal immigrants. Here is a link to an article explaining how this disinformation came about: http://www.snopes.com/politics/immigration/socialsecurity.asp
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