It Might Be Worth Forwarding, If It Were True

12.20.2010 
 

“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put its pants on.”  ~Winston Churchill

For many years, I’ve been on a mission to stop the forwarding of hoaxes. I used to just ignore them, until I learned that there’s no such thing as a harmless hoax.  Most of my friends know if they can’t verify, then just don’t forward it; but it is clear that some people forward e-mails just because they want them to be true. 

On one recent afternoon, I received no less than six e-mails from friends asking me to verify or debunk an e-mail they had received.  One was an email about Tommy Hilfiger making derogatory comments on the Oprah show; one was about unlocking cars by cell phone if locked by a keyless or remote control; and another was a slide show of “paintings” purportedly by an artist from the Ukraine. 

There were more; several of a political nature; an e-mail purporting to be from Adobe claiming that recipients can download an upgraded version of Adobe products by following links in the message; and the ever present message about a virus coming via e-mail.    

          Hoaxes are not just harmless pranks or errors in judgment. A hoax is a deliberately fabricated lie masquerading as truth.  A hoax can be spread for malicious purposes: to steal your personal information or spoil someone's reputation. A hoax may be absolutely innocent and created for God knows what reasons, but hoaxes all have consequences, some even have unintended consequences.

Let’s use the Tommy Hilfiger hoax as an example.  This story began in 1997.  It tells the tale of Tommy Hilfiger appearing on the Oprah show, making racist comments and stating that he wished African-Americans, Hispanics, Jews and Asians wouldn’t buy his clothes.  The forwarded e-mail suggested that “we put him in a financial state where he himself would not be able to afford the ridiculous prices he puts on his clothes.”   

Oprah stated that she had never met Tommy Hilfiger, and the ADL investigated the accusations and found them to have no basis in fact.  Still the e-mail continues to circulate.  Can you imagine what impact this has had on the Tommy Hilfiger business?  Does it make you wonder if the e-mail was designed as a form of corporate sabotage for the benefit of Hilfiger competitors? How many minorities were pained by reading the racist comments?   And can you imagine how much time Tommy Hilfiger must spend defending his reputation? 

The artist who is credited with the slide show of paintings, which are obviously photographs, feels violated that someone unknown to her would spread this e-mail with her photo and biography, when the work was actually done by a photographer with the same name. She is pleading for someone to make some order of that mess in order to protect her reputation, and to give credit to the photographer who created the photos.

The Adobe e-mail referenced above is in fact a phishing scheme to collect credit card information from unknowing victims by using a widely respected corporate name.  Following the instructions of said e-mail would result in unauthorized use of your credit card, and would require a lot of time in order to resolve the ensuing mess, not to mention the stress.

Virus warnings may seem harmless, but be aware that they are almost always not real, and the people who create viruses can use known hoaxes to their advantage. A good example is the AOL4FREE hoax. This began as a hoax warning about a nonexistent virus. Once it was known that this was a hoax, somebody began to distribute a destructive Trojan horse in a file named AOL4FREE, attached to the original hoax virus warning. The results were anything but harmless.

The internet is used to spread all sorts of misinformation on every topic, but no topic has become as pervasive as the ever increasing political hoaxes, mostly motivated by the desire to ridicule or besmirch opposing politicians or political institutions. It doesn’t matter if the false rumors are about Sarah Palin, President Obama, John McCain, Al Gore or any other political figure.  These people are elected officials and deserve respect as well as truth.  E-mails that are misleading or unsubstantiated are an affront to everyone who receives them.  They are poisonous to the political process and present a danger to our democracy.  If our opinions are colored by lies, we cannot make properly informed choices in the voting booth.  

The Internet has made it so easy for this ugly game to endure. We now spread faulty information faster and more efficiently than in the pre-digital era.  The good news is that we now have fact checking sites.  The leaders in this field are Snopes.com, PolitiFact.com, or the granddaddy of them all, Factcheck.org, sponsored by the Annenberg Public Policy Center.  I urge you to make frequent use of these sites, whenever you are about to forward an e-mail. If you forward a hoax, you become an accessory.  

One would think we would have learned from the Orson Welles “War of the Worlds” broadcast which created a panic when it aired in1938. Today the lessons endure: always remain vigilant.  Just because something has landed in your Inbox, don’t assume that it’s true.  We grew up in an era of journalistic scrutiny, where we could believe whatever we saw in print.  The Internet has changed all that.  Anybody can write whatever he wishes - lies, distortions, slander, hoaxes, scams, whatever; and each of us is free to scrutinize, ignore, or believe it.  A tiger can smile; and a snake can say I love you.  Be careful out there!