What is the best site for checking hoaxes?
Monday, March 31, 2008 at 10:51AM I really want most urban legends to be true. - from My Biases
They told me I was gullible... and I believed them.- from Doug's t-shirt says
Tomorrow is April Fool's Day. A great time to pass along a good urban myth or two - or more likely, receive them from one's colleagues.
Where do you head first to check out whether that long circulated story about cookie recipes, Kentucky Fried Rat or a tourist photo taken from the top of the World Trade Center dated 9/11 has any basis in reality? And more importantly, do you teach or kids and staff to verify the accuracy of those amazing factoids received by e-mail?
These are my standby sites to check hoaxes
- Snopes - the granddaddy of urban legend checkers. Wide scope and good search engine. Very current.
- Truth or Fiction - this is a new site for me. Concentrates on information spread via e-mail.
- Hoaxbusters. (U.S. Department of Energy) Hmmmmm, off line today. Good site if you believe the government can be trusted.
Going to keep this short. I need to send a box of Neiman-Marcus cookies to a terminally ill boy and get my mail to see if that check from my Nigerian partner has come yet. Remember not to put your PIN number in backwards or the police will be summoned and that cell phone use causes Alzheimer's.
Really.
Oh, check these out!
Gmail Custom Time
Virgle: The Adventure of Many Lifetimes
Reader Comments (3)
I love Snopes! I wish I could have a Snopes email filter that would automatically weed out the urban legends and other scams and hoaxes, and maybe even send out an automatic reply to the sender with a Snopes reference for them to check out. And sadly, I can thank my relatives for sending me most of the junk I receive.
Teach it to students?? How about to teachers? Someone at my school recently sent an all staff email on how to perform CPR on yourself by coughing. A quick websearch proved how incorrect (and dangerous!!) this information was! It shouldn't have been forwarded without being validated but too many people don't think to do that.
Hi Edi,
Hey, we have those teachers here too!
Thanks for the note,
Doug