**Chain Letters and Misinformation**

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I remember when I first went online over 10 years ago, and how exciting it was to receive email. I remember being so eager and anxious to forward any piece of email my friends had sent to me. You know the types of email that claimed to make you money from forwarding it, or gave you the latest medical information about some disease or condition you may catch from whatever, or the popular boycott this place because they did this or that, and the list goes on. I quickly became aware of the fact that most, or should I say the majority, of these email chain-letters were ‘false’ and created by someone who basically wanted attention. I also, learned about sites where you could go and check out the validity and truth behind the many online email rumors, and learned to always check out these emails before eagerly clicking ‘the forward button’. Today, we find many of the oldies but goody email chain letters embedded into personal websites, blogs, online journals, and message board forums, including here on Mylot, therefore reaching an even larger audience. However, that doesn’t mean we should believe it because we see it and read it on some ones site or discussion, and we should definitely still check the information for validity. Many of these pieces of misinformation were started with malicious intent; many more use credible people’s names to inflate and give more credit to the information it delivers. We should always approach with an eye of scrutiny or then we are no better than the person that created the lie, as we are feeding the frenzy by spreading it. Do you take part in forwarding or passing along email chain letters that have to do with boycotts, politics, get rich quick schemes, etc…? Do you check them out to see if they hold any truth before you send it? When in doubt I suggest a simple search on http://www.snopes.com/ or even do some leg work and search on google.