Responding to Hoax Emails
May 7, 2008
What do you do if you get an email that you know is a hoax?
If you receive a lot of hoax and other garbage emails, it can be tempting to fire off an irate reply condemning the sender for his or her foolishness. Serial hoax-forwarders might actually deserve such a reply. These email pests consistently refuse to check before forwarding even when recipients repeatedly point out their gullibility. However, the majority of people who forward a hoax email do so in good faith and perhaps simply need a bit of guidance on the issue from a more Internet savvy individual.
That said, I think there is a right way and a wrong way to go about providing this guidance. Here’s what works for me:
- Be Subtle!
Nobody likes to be ridiculed. If a reply is overly aggressive and makes people feel stupid they are likely to focus on defending themselves from a perceived attack and your chance to set the record straight may be lost. In other words, if you get a person’s back up, he or she probably won’t believe anything you try to tell them anyway.So, it is well worth spending a few minutes formulating a polite and subtle reply. The outcome is likely to be a lot more positive.
- Backup Your Argument
Even if you are subtle, the sender is unlikely to feel good about being taken in by a hoax. Human nature being what it is, he or she may well try to avoid feeling foolish by defending the claims in the message and disputing your argument. Therefore, always try to include one or more good external references in your message that back up your conclusions. - Take the Chance To Educate
Your reply also gives you a chance to help the sender learn how to avoid being caught by hoaxes in the future. Explain how and where you check the truth of messages before you forward them. - Don’t do a “Reply All”
Often, the “To” line of the hoax message reveals that it has been sent to many other people besides yourself. (You might also like to talk to the sender about trimming addresses and using Blind Carbon Copy…but that’s another story
). Some people simply do a “Reply All” when they send their hoax-rebuttal message.
While it might seem like this is a good method to let everyone know about the hoax at once, I think there are some real problems with this method. Firstly, there is a good chance that you don’t know everyone on the list, so you are basically sending an unsolicited message to strangers. Some might call that spamming. Secondly, at least some of the recipients may already know the message is a hoax and have no need to receive another email rebutting the first. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, you run the risk of humiliating the original sender in the eyes of his or her friends and acquaintances. That is quite unlikely to be helpful! (See Point 1 above).
I generally just suggest that the sender let others know that the message turned out to be a hoax. Whether they do so or not is basically their business.
I’ve found that a reply something like the following generally gains a good response:
Subject: Re: (whatever hoax message)
Hi [Sender's Name],
Thanks for your message.
However, I need to tell you that the email is actually a known hoax. You can check this for yourself by reading the article(s) at the link(s) below:
[ADD LINK]There are a great many email hoaxes going around all the time and some keep circulating for years. Most of us have fallen for an email hoax at some point I think, including yours truly (grin). These days, before I forward an email message, I always check it out at:
[Add links to one or more hoax information websites]Another good way to check if a message is a hoax, is to conduct an Internet search using a key phrase from the message. This will often bring up one or more reputable articles that clearly indicate if the claims in the message are true or false.
You might like to let whoever sent you the message know that it is a hoax as well.
Hope this helps.
Best wishes
[Your Name]
Unfortunately, there are some people that simply will not believe that a message is a hoax regardless of how compelling the evidence you present to them. In most cases, however, by using a good approach to the issue, you can help another Internet user become a little wiser and, indirectly, reduce the amount of nonsense emails that clutter inboxes.
http://www.hoax-slayer.com/
Gutsy Guilt
Don’t let shame over sexual sin destroy you.
The closest I have ever come in 26 years to being fired from my position as a pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church was in the mid-1980s, when I wrote an article for our church newsletter titled “Missions and Masturbation.” I wrote the article after returning from a missions conference in Washington, D.C., with George Verwer, the head of Operation Mobilization.
More at christianitytoday.com…
Why Kids Tattle and What To Do About It
By: Elaine M. Gibson
When we bring an adult perspective to this process of tattling, or telling on someone, we fail to understand what is going on for the tattler. As adults, we aren’t sure what to do about tattling and we convey our ambiguity to our children.
On one hand, we USE the information the child gives us to correct another child’s behavior or prevent damage to people and property.
But on the other hand, we tell the tattler that tattling is wrong. ‘Don’t be a tattletale.’
Children can’t cope with such double messages.
More at All Pro Dad …
All That’s Good in Sports
The NBA is as good a place as any for working out one’s salvation.
July was, without question, the worst month in recent memory for professional sports. Each one of America’s big three got its own black eye.
| Related articles and links |
- Barry Bonds pursued baseball’s most hallowed record, the career home run mark, amid suspicions of steroid abuse—and a pesky perjury investigation.
- Michael Vick, the NFL’s second-highest-paid player, was arraigned in federal court on charges of illegal dog fighting.
- And, most damaging, Tim Donaghy, an NBA referee, was accused by the FBI of betting on games in which he’d participated—the cardinal sin in all sports.
Overshadowed by these negative headlines was a noble decision made by Utah Jazz guard Derek Fisher: He asked to leave his team.
Toyota Headlamp Wiring
September 4, 2007
I found this site when searching for help for my Toyota Tamaraw FX headlamp wiring kit. I got a standard wiring kit so that I could put in higher wattage bulbs. But Toyota apparently wires their headlamps in a weird way. When I switch to high beams using the auxillary wiring, BOTH low and high beams come on, and the high beam indicator on the dashboard does not.
Here’s the site -> http://www.4crawler.com/4×4/CheapTricks/Headlights.shtml
Many thanks to the author for sharing. Haven’t tried it though, but will do as soon as I find the time.
Here’s another site with car wiring diagrams:
10 ways to communicate more effectively with customers and co-workers
We all know what happened to the Titanic. Clearer communications could have prevented the tragedy and the loss of more than 1,500 lives. Communications plays just as important a role in your careers. When asked to name the top three skills they believed their subordinates need, 70 percent of the readers of CIO magazine listed communications as one of them.
Here are some tips on how you can communicate more effectively with people at work, be they customers, co-workers, subordinates, or superiors.
The Forbidden City of Terry Gou
His complex in China turns out iPhones and PCs, powering the biggest exporter you’ve never heard of
By JASON DEAN
August 11, 2007; Page A1
Shenzhen, China
Past a guarded gate on the outskirts of this city sits one of the world’s largest factories. In dozens of squat buildings, it churns out gadgets bearing technology’s household names — Apple Inc.’s iPods and iPhones, Hewlett-Packard Co.’s personal computers, Motorola Inc. mobile phones and Nintendo Co. Wii videogame consoles.
Few people outside of the industry know of the plant’s owner: Hon Hai Precision Industry Co.
With a work force of some 270,000 — about as big as the population of Newark, N.J. — the factory is a bustling testament to the ambition of Hon Hai’s founder, Terry Gou. In an era when manufacturing has been defined by outsourcing, no one has done more to shift global electronics production to China. Little noticed by the wider world, Mr. Gou has turned his company into China’s biggest exporter and the world’s biggest contract manufacturer of electronics.
Read more at the Wall Street Journal…
How to prolong lithium-based batteries (BU34)
Battery research is focusing heavily on lithium chemistries, so much so that one could presume that all portable devices will be powered with lithium-ion batteries in the future. In many ways, lithium-ion is superior to nickel and lead-based chemistries and the applications for lithium-ion batteries are growing as a result.
Lithium-ion has not yet fully matured and is being improved continuously. New metal and chemical combinations are being tried every six months to increase energy density and prolong service life. The improvements in longevity after each change will not be known for a few years.
Read more at batteryuniverstiy.com…
Forget What You Learned in Grade School: Five Teamwork Myths
August 1st, 2007 @ 9:00 am
Since we were all knee-high to a whiteboard, we’ve been told that we need to work well as part of a team, that the team trumps the individual, that every leader is only as good as his team. Team team team team team. Who didn’t ride the pine in Little League so everyone could get a few minutes of playing time?
But now that we’re adults, cynics — many of us full-blown skeptics — can we really believe that this idea of team is the holy grail of productivity and success? Anyone whose days are spent trying to squeeze in work between all of their meetings can tell you that team unity can sometimes be counterproductive. And it seems that the only people who get anything out of you and your officemates catching a backward-falling coworker is the consulting company that charged $5,000 to show you how to do it.
So just as we adults have learned that you can, in fact, drink too much milk or water, we also must question the grade-school wisdom we’ve always assumed to be true about teamwork.
What Would Lance Armstrong Do?
August 1st, 2007 @ 10:49 am
Managers can line their shelves with books on collaboration and not get as much actionable information on teamwork as they would from watching one week of competitive cycling’s annual gauntlet of pain, Le Tour de France.
Football, baseball and basketball have always been fertile ground for team-building chestnuts – but none of those pursuits hold a laser pointer to the Tour, one of the most striking displays of teamwork in all of sports. Here are just a few of the ways that the almost two-dozen nine-man teams that compete in the twenty-day July race are an exemplar of collaboration.
