November 14, 2007...9:19 am

Emails I Love Getting

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Sometimes, you just get an email that makes your day - and the person who wrote it probably didn’t even realise it.

This was my response to them:

Hello! Thanks for writing with your inquiry about useful sites to check out regarding the weird email you got! Here’s where to go next:

SNOPES! www.snopes.com.

Snopes is also known as the “Urban Legends Reference Pages”. There’s also a forum board for people to ask additional questions and they’re regularly updating their pages.

You’ll find that apart from answering questions on particular claims, they have an excellent resource of really amusing ‘true’ stories and some pretty interesting red-herrings and ‘tall tails’ that have been passed around over the years.

The Museum Of Hoaxes! www.museumofhoaxes.com

I recommend this one, because the book is in the library! Features a historical bent towards hoaxes and frauds throughout time and has a great front page that challenges VERY recent news items (today it’s the Paris-Hilton-Concern-About-Drunk-Elephants, which should naturally raise an eyebrow regarding its validity, so it’s good to see that a site is openly challenging our assumptions about the world’s most famous ditz).

I would recommend this to students who were doing assignments in both English, History and certainly consumer education classes.

ScamWatch! http://www.scamwatch.gov.au

You should also check out their Little Black Book Of Scams - pdf format with a wide range of strategies and awareness raising, not only the email scams.

Scambusters.org! www.scambusters.org

Focuses mostly on email scams and has a regular mail-out on some of the popular ones that are circulating. Tends to deal with the more serious claims, such as the Nigerian money scams which have resulted in serious crimes being committed.

Urban Legends.com! www.urbanlegends.about.com

Features a ‘top 25′ list for the latest out and a blog, with a slightly less streamlined and more advertisement-based site. Still quite good with its ‘hoax of the day’.

Can be featured on a school site as not only a useful resource for students but also a really, really cool way to pass some time checking out what things we are led to believe in. Also quite good in regards to what rumours do have some truth to them and are worth warning us about. :)

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