Internet hoaxes
How many times have you received chain e-mail in your mailbox? There’s one particular relative that loves to forward one of those chain letters to me. You know what kinds those are. The ones that warn you about bad luck befalling those who did not forward those chain letters, and those who did, how lucky they had been.
Whenever I get those, I just delete them from my mailbox. But there are other kinds that gets around on the internet. Things about health alert, about attacks on women in car parks, about tainted products an so on.
The most recent e-mail I received was about how Glade Plug-in Air Freshener posed a fire hazard. I was a bit doubtful with that story because if it was true, there would have been a massive recall of the product by S.C. Johnson, the manufacturer of the product.
When I get such email that looks suspiciously like an internet hoax or rumor, I would immediately check the authenticity of the of the email with sites like snopes.com or urbanlegends. about.com
What about pictures or photos purportedly showing an incident or scene like the frog in the salad bag? A Malaysian blogger wrote about it and invited her readers to write what they would do with the frog, with a back link to her blog. She even offered prizes to the person who wrote the most interesting post about what they would do with the frog. According to Urban Legends he has written to the salad packing company and is still awaiting their reply.
What about the one showing the ghost under a hospital bed? I received that one too! I deleted it immediately and I did not want to know if it was true or not. 
Actually the picture was taken from the DVD cover of a Thai horror film!
Next time you receive a letter or a picture in your mailbox, check either with snopes or urbanlegends for the veracity of the claims in the letter. 
Take the UrbanLegends Image Quiz. I got 41 out of 55 correct - 75% score. 
