My experience with Urban Legends, Hoaxes and Myths has, fortunately, been limited. I think most of my friends and family that e-mail me, can see my eyes rolling to the back of my head and hear me saying “OH PLEASE” when deciding not to include me in their list of recipients- I’m o.k. with that- I do not feel left out. Although I have always been skeptical when hearing or reading second-hand information, I must admit there have been occassions when I believed (or wanted to believe) some of the hoaxes sent my way. If the language or source sounded official, I’d fall for it. Some of the chain letters play on your compassion and sympathy and I thought “what if there is a child dying of cancer and I’m not passing this on because I’m being cynical?”. Finally, I am not proud to admit that I did pass on one chain letter promising money from Bill Gates (I still check my mail every day).Thanks to these informative links, I will not only have the resourses to verify their authenticity, I will be able to educate my students as well as friends and family.

I was very interested to read the tell-tale signs of hoaxes:
- “Send to Everyone you Know” is included in the e-mail
- Technical sounding language
- Credit by Association (the origin of a warning being a prestigious company).

It is valuable to educate students on the importance of authenticating these e-mails and not to continue circulating them. The monetary cost becomes very great because of the volume of hoaxes being circulated. More importantly, I feel it’s essential to teach students to question and verify what they hear or read, not only on the internet but in all areas of their life. I used the supermarket tabloids as a way of teaching my children that people could put anything in print, whether or not it is true. It’s up to us not to support it by buying it or passing on inaccurate information that hurts people. I would educate my students (and intend on educated family and friends) by telling them to use websites like www.hoaxbuster.ciac.org to authenticate information.