e-petitions and other hoaxes

Having received several of those fake UN and "Barbara Bell" petitions recently, I've come across several good resources for checking out "petition-drives" that land in my email box. If we all can get into the habit of checking out a story before we forward it, we can stop those chain letters sooner (hopefully!). Here are a couple of Web sites that I've found:

http://www.breakthechain.org - a site devoted to "breaking the chain" of email petitions and other chain letters
http://www.snopes2.com/ - Urban Legends repository
http://www.hoaxkill.com - includes info on "virus warnings" that warn of viruses that don't even exist.

I have decided to use these pages to check out emails before I forward them - and I won't forward email petitions (they clog up serves, more effective petition drives are set up on Web sites, or good old clip boards).

(And if you want to see something funny on this topic, check out this "Internet Soapbox": http://www.smilepop.com/index.cfm?action=viewcard&content_id=611&page_id=611 ).

Rachel

My favorite anti-hoax web sites include:

http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org - Hoaxbusters
http://hoaxinfo.com - Virus hoaxes and netlore
http://www.internet-101.com/hoax - Anti-Virus, Hoax, Myth, Fraud, Chain Letter and Anti-Spam Sites

John