Small vent- when will people learn that Snopes is their friend?

[perdidobay]

I have an uncle that just about daily forwards emails that constantly appear on Snopes as being false or unreliable. I have sent him links to Snopes before and he still forwards these emails!
Todays email was about heart attacks and lying down and new bayer crystal aspirin which the email recommends during a heart attack.
The truth- the aspirin has 10X the amount recommended and also has caffeine- that speeds up the heart rate.
Does everyone have a relative or freind that just refuses to fact check before forwarding these type emails?

 

[Sheree Bobbins]

Thank goodness, no. I have used Snopes in the past and appreciate it's veracity. I don't know what you can do about your uncle.

 

[luvmy3]

I do, and I send her the link to snopes debunking it. Yet, she still continues to send me stuff

 

[happygirl]

I personally don't care if people send me stuff. They are only doing out of concern or trying to help. I will never get mad over that.

I have found that most of the time snopes is accurate but not always.

 

[perdidobay]

Thank goodness, no. I have used Snopes in the past and appreciate it's veracity. I don't know what you can do about your uncle.

I guess I'll just start deleting everything that doesn't say Animal in the header - he does forward really cute photos from lolcat and other sites.

 

[MushyMushy]

Oh! Even better are the ones that will say "Even Snopes says this is true!" and you go onto Snopes and, nope, it's false.

I HATE those!

 

[luvmy3]

I personally don't care if people send me stuff. They are only doing out of concern or trying to help. I will never get mad over that.

I have found that most of the time snopes is accurate but not always.

I don't get mad but I always wonder how people can just believe everything that they see on the internet, especially after sending 100 emails that have been proven false by snopes. I would think that they would at least check themself before sending another one, and another, and another...

 

[pearlieq]

I have one relative like that. From "spunkball" to Congress trying to eliminate sport fisihing, she's sent 'em all.

I never bother to correct her. She's in her 50's, so I doubt she's going to change. Plus, her heart is in the right place, even if her head is AWOL. We love her anyway.

Wouldn't the world be kind of dull if there weren't a few crackpots out there?

 

[DVC-Don]

I have some relatives I've had to block due to these emails.

 

[bumbershoot]

I've noticed that it tends to stop after the first or second time you "reply ALL" with the Snopes info...

 

[acejka]

I had a coworker like that. She would fight you when you tried to tell her it was just a forward and that it wasn't true... I gave up and just laughed to myself that she believed the stuff and left it alone.

 

[castmemberb4]

I have a couple of friends who send me stuff just because they know I'll find out if it's true! I send them the snopes links everytime why can't they check snopes themselves ?????
Recently somebody sent out some thing on this board that started a debate and I sent the snopes link proving it untrue/very old. Again why don't people check things out,even if they don't know snopes they could goolge it and probably be lead to snopes.

 

[sunnyday123]

Because they are all terrified of men in parking lots spraying perfume!

 

[marlynnp]

lol, my husband and I were just laughing about this the other day. His mother does this all the time and the latest one declared that it was verified with Snoops!

 

[Silent1CB]

I have an uncle that just about daily forwards emails that constantly appear on Snopes as being false or unreliable. I have sent him links to Snopes before and he still forwards these emails!
Todays email was about heart attacks and lying down and new bayer crystal aspirin which the email recommends during a heart attack.
The truth- the aspirin has 10X the amount recommended and also has caffeine- that speeds up the heart rate.
Does everyone have a relative or freind that just refuses to fact check before forwarding these type emails?

My dad is the same way, and one other friend. I look it up on snopes & send it back to them & ask them to stop helping spread this junk. They don't get it.

My favorites are the ones that say the person looked it up on Snopes & its true, and even gives a link. A link that doesn't work OR better yet a link telling them its false.

 

[englishteacha]

My sister used to forward all of us emails like that. My brother would reply all with the Snopes link. She'd get mad at him for it! I know members of my family will believe anything they read, so I'm glad my brother debunked her emails.

 

[kaytieeldr]

I personally don't care if people send me stuff. They are only doing out of concern or trying to help. I will never get mad over that.

I have found that most of the time snopes is accurate but not always.

Snopes is, ultimately, primarily run by a couple - with the wife doing the bulk of ALL the research. All of it. I think it's pretty good for one person!

I never bother to correct her. She's in her 50's, so I doubt she's going to change.

Hey! I resent that! If you can prove unequivocally to us 50-plussers that we're wrong about something, we just MIGHT change!

 

[FireDancer]

I have some people like that too. I have some filters set up in my inbox for those people that does a pretty good job of weeding out the forwarded garbage.

The worst is when people send Power Point shows of cute things or anything really, or PDFs of the same. It never ceases to amaze me that people will open these programs which can contain all kinds of malicious code. No wonder bot-nets end up with 40 million drones.

We had to set up a filter on our firewall at work that blocks all Power Point attachments and most all attachments for some of our employees. I really don't feel like spending a weekend cleaning the computer equivalent of AIDS off of our servers because someone wanted to see a Power Point slide show of puppies.

 

[smidgy]

I personally don't care if people send me stuff. They are only doing out of concern or trying to help. I will never get mad over that.

I have found that most of the time snopes is accurate but not always.

It's not that I(or the OP) really "care" about it. It just clogs your inbox. and you tend to "delete" just about anyting from that person.. just like the 10 chain letters each week from the same person.... OR the 5 jokes a day from the same person... ALL those jokes can't be funny, so why take the time ro read any of them?

:

I never bother to correct her. She's in her 50's, so I doubt she's going to change. Plus, her heart is in the right place, even if her head is AWOL. We love her anyway.

Wouldn't the world be kind of dull if there weren't a few crackpots out there?

um, I am 53. maybe people "in their 50's" seem old to you. and unchangable. but you'll change your mind about that.
don't worry. when you reach 50, you'll become a lot more flexible.

 

[phamton]

I personally don't care if people send me stuff. They are only doing out of concern or trying to help. I will never get mad over that.

They may be doing it out of concern but the bottom line is that they are instilling fear about false things. Making others worried about false rumors is not doing anyone a favor. There are enough things to worry about that are real without using scare tactics. Also some of the misinformation sent via email warnings can be downright dangerous if followed, especially the medical urban legends like the cough CPR. I am just glad that snopes is there to debunk some of those emails. I'd hate for someone to die simply because they did what was advocated in the urban legend email.

I have found that most of the time snopes is accurate but not always.

I haven't found any mistakes on their site. They list multiple sources and usually go straight to source listed. For instance the anti-perspirant/breast cancer which quotes the American Cancer Society in their scare tactics--snopes goes straight to the website of the cancer society. If anything seems inaccurate on their sites, you can certainly follow the research they did and decide for yourself. I hate to use the word "always" but I'd bet they are at least 99.9% accurate.