Ever get one of those emails that opens with the line “pass this on to as many of your friends as possible”?
Chances are, you probably shouldn’t — that sentence is one of the prime indicators you are reading a hoax. Don’t feel bad, it seems like everyone gets taken in by a hoax at one time or another. From all walks of life, your neighbour to the scientist in the laboratory.
In fact, scientists are responsible for one of the most famous hoaxes of all time. Not for creating it — though science has certainly created a few — but for believing that a motley collection of modern and ancient bones, human and chimpanzee, was the remains of a previously unknown stage in the evolution of man.
And they believed it for years. I even remember finding the Piltdown Man still described in my elementary school science textbook in the 1970s, even though it had been discredited in the 1950s. (Yep, those were some old textbooks.)
While scientists spent decades of time examining and debating Piltdown man, they’re not alone in wasting their time — even cynical news reporters get taken in.
One of my favourites is the five-cent tax on emails. That one often makes the rounds, ending up on the editorial desk as a letter to the editor. Most times, it gets laughed at and thrown in the circular file. But a very few times, as happened at CNN and the Washington Post, it gets taken seriously.
This particular hoax has circulated on the Internet since about 1999, warning that the federal government was about to quietly push a bill through the House of Commons that would amount to a five cent tax on each e-mail you send. (The details differ in the U.S. version … no doubt there are versions for France, Russia, Uzbekistan, you name it.)
For those of you concerned about this, you can rest easy. It’s not going to happen. But the hoax has a life of its own and may never die out.
It’s hard to put down the people who take this hoax at face value. It’s well crafted. Like any really good hoax, it has all the elements to make people want to believe. A government corporation wanting to make up lost revenue, faceless MPs determined to get a share of all that free communications passing around on the Internet, it’s all there.
It’s also all bunk. Looking at the details from one version I recently received, well, there has never been an MP Tony Schnell and there is no Richard Stepp, Queen’s Counsel, listed in the Toronto phone book.
And this is only one of many hoaxes circulating on the net. CNN once made up a list of the top 10, giving the email hoax the No. 1 spot. According to CNN, it got that exalted spot after “a gullible television reporter asked debating Senate candidates Hillary Clinton and Rick Lazio about pending legislation to establish a five-cent tax on email messages.” (Both of them were opposed to it, by the way.)
Other notable hoaxes include the ever-popular one about a child dying with cancer, explaining how every email you send to the American Cancer Society earns her a nickel to help with the cost of treatments. At one time, that one was so popular that the ACS was forced to change its email address. Nor do they only come by email — the venerable $250 Neiman-Marcus cookie recipe hoax predates the Internet by decades.
The list goes on and on, but they all have some things in common. They play on our emotions; on our sympathy for people in trouble, on our distrust of governments and corporations or on our fear of being harmed.
Mind you, I keep wondering when I will be caught by one of these hoaxes. Oh, that reminds me, I must start planning a surprise for a couple of my co-workers, they have a special day coming April 1.
Steve Kidd is a reporter working for the Western News who has never been taken in by a hoax, especially one prepared by a co-worker in cahoots with the editor.
