One of the problems with “Forwards” is the shear number of them being passed around and around and around on the Internet. It seems that 97.3% of Emails are “Forwards” and “Forwards” never, ever seem to stop or go away. There are “Forwards” that started circulating the Internet in 2003 and are still going strong 7 years later.

The fact that they have lasted 7 years is bad enough, but when you add to the fact that of that 98.7% of the “Forwards” purposely contain misinformation or are what is known as a “Hoax”. While almost everyone who has an Email account knows of the existence of “Hoaxes” and that you need to be diligent not to fall for one, they fall for them all the time. It’s easy to fall for them because the majority of people will make one basic, incorrect assumption. That assumption is that the person who sent you the “Forward” cared enough to check out the accuracy before hitting “Forward”.

We’re not saying that people DON’T care. In fact, what we are saying is the exact opposite. People DO care. They have received a “Forward” and it has touched them either emotionally (usually) or intellectually and felt the need to spread the word. Unfortunately, they are going on raw emotion. They have just read of a grave “injustice” or an extreme unpatriotic act or their faith has been threatened or that there is some type of danger that must be dealt with immediately. The source of their information is the “Forward” so they turn to it for directions on how to deal with or defeat the threat. The “Forward” has a very simple, “quick” solution. The solution is to pass the “Forward” on.

However, what they should do is take a momemt to catch their breath. Then they should check the facts of the “Forward”. It is a fairly simply thing to do. Simply go to a “Hoax Busting” site. There are quite a few on the Internet including “Snopes.com”, “Truth or Fiction”, “Urban Legends” and “Hoax Slayer”. By typing in a few “key words” into their search engine boxes you can search their sites for information quickly. They will tell you what is “True”, what is “False” and what is a “Mixture”. Plus they will usually go into details about the actual facts regarding the subject discussed in the “Forward”.

Armed with the accurate information, a person can than decide if they should pass it on (only if 100% true), simply delete it (if it is 100% false). If the information is a mixture of “True” and “False” a person really should not pass the information on. That is unless they take the time to correct or at least acknowledge the “False” information. By doing so a person is stopping the spread of a Hoax. ~ Editor