If you have received email hoaxes by the dozen and hate them as I do, then read on.
If you are the ones, who panic when they receive such forwards, and then forward it to ALL on your contact list, then I BEG you to read on.Please. Do me this favour…!!
There was this once, I’d forwarded an email alert to my brother on his office ID. Bro sent a stinging reply, the gist of which was something as follows :-
“You are a blot on the IT industry. You should be ashamed of heeding to such nonsense mails which do nothing, but clutter the network bandwidth. A simple google search would have opened your eyes, if only you had bothered to look”. This is a very refined version of what he actually accused me of 🙂
Anyhow, since then, I can detect a mail hoax from miles away. Here is a list of pointers which help to quickly identify them :-
1) Use of CAPITAL letters. Yeah, thats a giveaway. As clear as day. You see a mail which contains half the text in caps, kindly re-direct it to the nearest recycle bin.
2) The mail insists that you HAVE to send it to everyone !!! Yeah yeah, dump that one ASAP.
3) Contains prophecies too scary to comprehend!!! Shudder! Your hard-disk will be wiped out!! All your contacts would be infected too!! None of your applications would behave as expected!! Your Favourite Aloo Chaat would be taken over by the Baingan Bharta!! (Ok, that last one was by me….but you get the drift!). Dump this one too.
4) “If you click on so-n-so link, AOL will donate such-n-such amount for a so-n-so cause”. Its a wonder AOL isn’t bankrupt yet. With the number of hoaxes using their name, AOL sure is getting some much-needed publicity!!
5) “Poor so-n-so is dying of cancer and needs help immediately”. These hoaxes have been going around for so long, that the poor so-n-so must have died a natural death due to old age by now. Stop wasting your sympathy. The trash goes into the bin. Right now.
6) Contains hoax images. Most people forward such mails because they arent able to detect the fake from real. Test your hoax detection skill here. And yeah, dont forget to delete that mail!!
Happy mailing people 🙂
Hoping to get some reprieve from hoaxes henceforth ….. 🙂
PS: For a post warning about mails containing too many Caps, I seem to have overshot the limit meself. Sincere apologies 🙂
Edited to add : Do let me know your scores once you take the hoax test. I scored 70%. Not bad I say!
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