Posts Tagged ‘e-mail’

“People get dozens, hundreds, even thousands of emails each day, so it’s only natural for them to gravitate toward the messages that are well thought-out and that clearly respect their time and attention. Careless emails do not invite careful responses”.

Let’s face it, we’ve all opened up our in-box at some time or other to face a multitude of long-winded, or poorly written e-mails… and to be fair, we’re probably guilty of sending out a few that fit into this category. We’re not so bold as to patronise our readers by telling them how to write an e-mail (just like making a presentation, everyone has their own style)… but we would like to highlight this article which we think is worth a read.

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Image by Elizabeth Salib

Have you ever received an e-mail from a friend or colleague that contains an ‘attention grabbing’ story, photo, or video… and wondered whether it was actually true? Here a few examples we received recently:-

Man takes death defying leap across Grand Canyon (see photo above).
The world-famous Red Arrows have been banned from appearing at the 2012 London Olympics because they are deemed “too British”.
Scammers are attempting to obtain CVV2/CVC2 security numbers by phoning credit card holders and posing as Security staff at Visa.
Barn full of old cars found in a barn in Portugal.

These e-mails are often sent in good faith, and at face value seem feasable… but they seldom contain any supporting information or documentation. We’re optimists here, but we can be sceptical too, so we often like to check out the story’s validity. We could of course use Google, but this might involve a bit of time and effort. A nice alternative is a website called ‘The Hoax-Slayer’. As well being a source of entertainment (helping us to settle a few debates down the pub) the site has an educational value too:-

“Hoax-Slayer is dedicated to debunking email hoaxes, thwarting Internet scammers, combating spam, and educating web users about email and Internet security issues. Hoax-Slayer allows Internet users to check the veracity of common email hoaxes and aims to counteract criminal activity by publishing information about common types of Internet scams. Hoax-Slayer also includes anti-spam tips, computer and email security information, articles about true email forwards, and much more. New articles are added to the Hoax-Slayer website every week.”

So if you want to find out which of the above stories were in fact true, you will need to visit the site for yourself!

The Hoax-Slayer

Image by Hans van de Vorst