Fraud Tip of the Day - February 2

Use Snopes to Identify Chain Letter Hoaxes

When in doubt, use Snopes to determine if something is a hoax. I don't know about the rest of you but I get a few chain letter style emails a day. A chain letter is a piece of mail or email that tells you to send copies to several people in the hopes that something good happens.

Sometimes you are warned that if you don't send a set number of copies to your friends, you will have broken the chain, you could suffer dire consequences.

These letters take many forms. Either you need to warn people or share a prayer or a happy thought help Johnny find his family or save Emily from a fate worse than death. In the email you are instructed to send the email to some of your friends and that this somehow will be helpful. So just how do you decide if this is real or not?

My advice is to be skeptical of anything that looks remotely like this. Go to www.Snopes.com and plug in the main subject of the message and see what you find. More often than not (and maybe every time) you are going to discover that what you've been sent is a hoax. Breaking the chain won't bring you bad luck.

Best of all, you won't look foolish when you send copies to 10 of your friends that do check Snopes regularly.

There's more than enough spam in the world already. Don't add to it by falling for these email hoaxes. Take a moment to do your due diligence and don't be afraid to break the chain.

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