Q: I got an e-mail about a poor sick boy that needs help. It says I should forward it along to get more donations. Is it for real?
A: If you receive an e-mail that has information that sounds too good or too bad to be true, it’s probably not. Any e-mail that has strong language encouraging you to forward it to everyone you know should be suspect.
Endless e-mails circulate to well-meaning people who try to help out. The bad news is that almost all of them are hoaxes. Often called "Urban Legends," various permutations of hoaxes have circulated around the Internet for years.
Right after 9/11, one went around that was filled with completely bogus "predictions" from Nostradamus, for example. And various versions of the Nigerian scam and the Nordstroms cookie recipe have gone around for probably 10 years now. Before you let your emotions get the better of you, check one of the following sites to see if the e-mail has been identified as a hoax:
- About Urban Legends and Folklore: http://urbanlegends.miningco.com/library/blhoax.htm,
- Hoaxbusters: http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org
- Symantec (owner’s of Norton AntiVirus) hoaxes: http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html,
- Snopes: http://www.snopes.com,
- vMyth (truth about viruses and hoaxes): http://www.vmyths.com.
If you are considering donating money to anyone, first and foremost, do your homework. Do not donate to any organization that you don’t know anything about. Support reputable organizations. We’ve all heard of the Red Cross, and they are almost always among the first to use their Web site for updates on disasters (www.redcross.org). They always need blood donations and have information on how you can help.
Government sites are also a good source of reputable links. The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (www.fema.gov) has posted many notices and updates and has information on ways people can help disaster victims. Portal sites with news feeds such as Yahoo (www.yahoo.com) contain a wealth of information as well.