I will set down a tale . . . it may be history, it may be only a legend, a tradition. It may have happened, it may not have happened. But it could have happened. --- Mark Twain

   After having a correspondence with another list owner about a hoax that he had passed on to his audience I realized that it is that time of year again. A lot of hoaxes and urban legends seem to pop up around the holidays.

   Although his intentions was honorable he failed to check the sources and was taken in by the hoax himself.  Trying to help he jumped in with both feet and became part of the hoax.

   Hoaxes are usually pranks and can be very damaging.  There are Charitable organizations that operate off donations and their main purpose is to help those in need.  They get hit so hard with telephone calls from people wanting to find out if the story is true that they have to spend the donated income to cover the cost of answering the phone instead of using it for their main objective.

I performed a search using the Keep Smiling Search Page for you so you will not fall for these email pranks.  If you want to check out a specific hoax you can use any of the search engines on the Keep Smiling search page and just enter the keywords use in the email, such as a name, or item , or incident and information will pop up.  When entering a phrase in a search engine remember to use "quotation marks".

We will start with Stiller Research's Hoax Page.  Here you will find a very well prepared list of email hoaxes and links that will tell you about each  hoax.

Hoaxbusters is one of the many organizations that try to keep you informed.  Here you will find information on all aspects of a hoax.  These pages are made available to you by the Office of the Chief Information Officer of the U. S. Department of Energy and the CIAC computer incident response team.

There is a Hoax about this years election circulating Check out what Urban Legends has to say about it.

So remember Don't Spread That Hoax

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