I frequently get e-mail from friends and family urging me to boycott a company because of something terrible they've done, or to buy a product in order to suppport a worthy cause, or to send a greeting card to a sick child. These messages all have one thing in common: they are hoaxes.
No, I don't mean that my friends are deliberately trying to trick me. They are simply forwarding messages that they believe to be worthwhile. But the messages are, in almost every case, false. In the very few cases I found where the original message was true, it was long ago expired. (For example, the Mars candy company
really did make donations for breast cancer research every time someone bought special pink and white M&Ms. But the offer expired in 2004, and the mail is STILL being forwarded around the Internet.)
These perpetually circulating messages of often innocent enough, but in in some cases they are malicious and can cause a great deal of damage. I recently got an e-mail urging me not to shop at Target stores because Target refused to support veterans group, and was owned by a
French company (gasp!). Of course, the story was false - but how many people now have a bad image of Target because of the e-mail?
It's pretty simple to stop these messages. Just don't forward them - ever, and ask your friends not to send them to you. Of the dozens I've received, only ONE has turned out to be valid.
If you need help proving to your friends that a particular message is a hoax, visit
urbanlegends.about.com or
www.snopes.com, or use your favorite search engine to search for the title of the mail message plus the word "hoax".