Absolutely not. There's a lot of hoax floating around the internet. And not just the internet, hoaxes are everywhere, including in chats, text messages, etc. And these hoaxes have 1 thing in common, they all mislead people into believing what isn't true.
In the short term, it can instill fear into people's hearts about what he/she think is happening, and further people from the reality of what IS happening. It can also cause panic in people's hearts, and possibly leading to a spreading of the hoax.
In the long term, it can mislead a lot of people, possibly leading to an overly paranoid society. For example, there's a hoax email that's floating around that said that computer's are really susceptible to virus, and there are viruses that will make your computer explode. If that news are forwarded everywhere, and there's no one that stands up and correct the rumor, there's a possibly the society will get scared by computer, and become overly paranoid to use it.
But it sounds so scary! How should I know if it's a hoax?
It's easy, really. You can use these easy steps to determine if it's a hoax or not.
- If it's a breaking news, urgent, or possibly has an effect on a lot of people, chances are, news sites all over will already post it in their website. And there must be a lot of media coverage on the issue. So if you only see it in that one email, that's not credible in any way whatsoever.
- Search about the issue in Google. A simple search can lead to enormous findings.
- Usually, hoax has no mentioning of the time a particular incident happened, thus making the hoax looks like an always new incident. A real news will always have timestamps of when it occurs
- Look it up in Hoax Slayer, a site specializing in killing hoaxes that floats around in emails.
And if you're still unsure if the issue is true / not, don't forward it anywhere. It might bring more harm than good.
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