Recently a total stranger sent me an angry email demanding to know why I credited him with writing an article, on an old, inactive blog, which I no longer update, he had never written.
Actually, he didn't bother to send me the link, so I had to do an internet search to find what he had referred to. Eventually, I found the "guilty" article. Luckily, I had thanked the person who had sent me the original information in the post. I passed that person's email onto the person complaining and hope that they'll straighten it out between them.
So much false information floats around the internet. I'm sure I'm not the only blogger who has deleted posts based on totally false information. I wish people who send out emails warning us of all sorts of later proven to be false scares would check things out first.
Recently, I got something from a friend claiming something "that we all must protest and publicize." She forwarded it with all the prior fowarded addresses. I know one of them and asked him for verification. He answered that he "trusted" the person who had sent it to him. That's not good enough for me. I asked him to verify it and am waiting for his response.
One thing that has me very suspicious is the font used in the original scare/warning letter. It's the old dot-matrix font, which isn't popular today. I can't imagine anyone very serious or official using it.
Today's technology makes fraud very easy. It pays to be a bit paranoid to prevent later embarrassment.
2 comments:
Whenever I get a "Scare" email, I first check it out at SNOPES (urban legend pages)
http://www.snopes.com/
I've discovered that nearly all are false.
I guess we ought to check out that proposed "health care tax" on expats. It would cost more to enforce than they'd get. And what's "a family?"
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