We’ve all seen or at least know someone who posts these types of links or messages within our social media sites. Whether it is seen within our newsfeed or - that annoy me the most - ones that I receive within my message box on Facebook. One moment I’m excited to receive a message, the next I’m annoyed that the message I’ve received says if I do not send this message to at least 10 people in the next 5 minutes after reading this message, my phone is going to ring and it’ll be an axe murderer going to kill all the cute little innocent puppies in the world.
Chain letters, chain messages or chain emails as they are more commonly known as, has been around for a very long time – at least the 1930’s (not obviously the emails or text messages) when they were called luck letters. They usual pry on people’s good nature or just plain old superstition. Most of them are just laughable, but all of them are false. If you’re like me, you may have tried one or two just to give it a go to see what happened. Otherwise if you’re probably the 1% of the worlds civilized population you’re very clever not to fall victim to it or you’re part of the many people who actually start the thing to see how it takes off. Now I can tell you for certain that even though I’ve may have continued on a couple through my email, I have definitely deleted loads more.
Now chain letters etc are one thing, but it has become more and more frequent on social networking sites that hoaxes are just exploding. From the worlds smallest elephant fighting for its life (it’s actually a dead elephant foetus because its mother died); to Facebook charging for its usage (it mentions on the home page that it will always be free) and lastly to things like nails found in cheese in dog parks (the story originated this year in Argentina, there were no dogs harmed). I admit when you first come across these types of stories, your shocked, repulsed or at least shaking your head at these sorts of stories. Thankfully with websites like www.snoopes.com a lot of these stories can be proved on the spot whether if there is any truth behind it. To be honest most of the time a simple Google search would suffice to find out the truth behind it all.
Lately there has been a serious decline in the weird video link that I personally haven’t seen around for a while now, supposedly link you to videos of either a young girl being caught stripping on a webcam by her father, or some other really distasteful images. If some of you haven’t learnt by now, these are just one sneaky way someone has put up to put some kind of virus either on your computer or to hack into your Facebook account. Usually the one way to spot these kinds of fake links is if usually it is spammed on your newsfeed within Facebook. Or just a simple Google search would do.
Usually the best advice that I could give to anyone about any of these things (including weird ghost or horror stories), which seem to be on the rise as of late, is to use your common sense. And if for some reason you lack in the common sense department, at least ask someone you know who has some. Just a simple Google search about anything too good to be true will let you know the real story behind all of these. So at least it will not only protect you against viruses, but it will also protect your friends and family against them as well.
World’s smallest elephant - http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/prayer/elephant.asp
Ghost of three men and a baby - http://www.snopes.com/movies/films/3menbaby.asp
Munchkin’s Suicide on Wizard of Oz - http://www.snopes.com/movies/films/ozsuicide.asp
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