One of my pet peeves these days is the countless forwards of hoax emails that float around on the Internet. These are carefully crafted messages that are meant to fool and scare. What amazes me is how educated people lap up these innocent sounding emails, and forward them with their own exhortations for the recipients to be careful!
As far as I am concerned, if something doesn't add up, or sounds too good to be true, it probably is. There are some great resources on the Internet to help identify many of these hoaxes, and it is very simple to use them and get authentic information. A couple of good ones are:
Recently I received a forward on a group that I am a part of. This was a forward that warned about the "dangers" of traditional cancer therapy like chemo, radiation and surgery. It suggested dealing with cancer through diet control by "starving" the cancer cells by avoiding certain types of food. The research was attributed to a famous Cancer Research Centre in the US. Unfortunately the whole thing is not only untrue, but downright dangerous. You will find more information about this hoax at http://www.snopes.com/medical/disease/cancerupdate.asp
My hope is that more people will question these types of forwards and stop spreading them through automatic forwards.
