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Inundated
by Email Hoaxes
March 12, 2002
By James G. Wilson
How many of you out there receive emails now and then "exposing"
politicians for their evil deeds, bad quotes, estimated IQs
or other misinformation? How many of you believe them outright
and pass them along to everyone in your address books as the
messages invariably direct you to do? Goodness knows that
I have received more than my fair share of these email hoaxes,
and it is time to start "exposing" them as the garbage
they are.
Here is the top five that have arrived in my inbox:
5.) Gold Star Mothers
This one asserts that Hillary Rodham Clinton insulted Gold
Star Mothers by "refusing to meet with them." A quick check
of the Gold Stars Mothers website
itself debunks this email as a hoax. But, people don't research
these emails and just pass them on. Here is a link to more
info on this hoax: http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org/refpages/goldstarmoms.htm
4.) Ollie North Names Osama bin Laden in 1987
Oliver North, himself, discredits this as a hoax. It took
me less than 30 seconds to do a search on Google to find his
remarks: Click here
to read them.
3.) Goreisms
Republicans started showing their desperation about the
(then) upcoming 2000 presidential election by recycling Dan
Quayle quotes and attributing them to Al Gore. Of course,
gullible conservatives were all-too-eager to run with this
hoax. Placing any one of the quotes listed in the email into
a search engine invariably shows (with dates) Dan Quayle first
uttered them.
However, even at least one of the misspeaks that Quayle (and
now Gore) supposedly made has been shown to be only a joke.
The one about going to Latin American but not speaking Latin
is explained at: http://www.snopes2.com/quotes/quayle.htm Another site explains
more credibly the whole issue of switching the Quayle quotes
to Gore quotes: http://www.ssqq.com/archive/intern01.htm
2.) Presidential IQs
Click
here for a full explanation of this hoax started in the
summer of 2001.
1.) Election Day 2000 Changed
This hoax tried to convince voters that two election days
were needed because polling places expected too high a volume
of traffic on the scheduled day. I've seen both versions of
Democrats and Republicans being told that they would have
to wait until the following day to vote since the other party
was designated to vote on Tuesday. Here is a link to more
info on this hoax: http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/weekly/aa110100a.htm
If an email directs you to "send this email to everyone you
know!!!" consider it suspect until you can verify the information
in it. There are credible sources on the net to check out
the validity of many of these potentially bogus emails. The
one I use most often is: http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org.
Many emails often warn of new computer viruses that turn
out to be hoaxes. Always check out: http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html before
forwarding any "virus alerts" to others. Hopefully we, as
an internet community, can stop the unsubstantiated rumor
mills that produce these hoaxes from being so effective by
checking these sites first.
Now, if only we could reduce the SPAM!!!
James G. Wilson is webmaster of America
Held Hostile
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