Why a Net-Story Debunking Page?

I guess I just got tired of the same damn E-mails over and over. So I made it a point to look into as many of those E-mails as possible over the past year. How many of those virus warnings are real? How many of those "Bill Gates Will Give You Cash!!!" stories can be believed?

I decided to find out. Or at least TRY to find out.

Did I really want to do this? No, not really. But getting too many of the same silly notes (from different poeple) got old after a while. I mean, I can't TELL you how many times I've received that "Neiman Marcus Cookie recipe" from net-friends. Sure, the recipe makes passable cookies (not nearly as good as the REAL Neiman Marcus cookies); but the story's a hoax, and that's hardly grounds for forwarding the recipe to everyone on your E-mail list!!

Did I need to create this page? Hardly. Am I compulsive? Maybe. Was it time-consuming? Absolutely. Hell, I took time to check stories that were already too fanciful to believe! But time after time, even the more believable ones turned out to be fakes.....
So why keep checking the incoming net-drivel? Why not immediately delete all the warnings and stories that hit our respective Inboxes?

Frankly, it's because some of the notes look quite serious. The virus warnings, in particular, always make me wonder if I should download the latest McAfee virus scan update. And if any of those warnings were REAL, I would genuinely WANT to forward them to all of my friends, so they too could escape the most recent Net-scourge. So I feel like it's my responsibility to research such messages before heeding or forwarding them to anyone else.

But it's not just about phony warnings or bad cookie recipes; it's about NOT exposing my friends to online spammers.....
Don't laugh. Internet marketing companies use E-mail chain letters to "test" E-mail addresses for later 'spamming'. When you forward a "warning" or "notice" to your entire address book, most subsequent readers can see the E-mail addresses of all those to whom you've sent the note (as well as the mailing lists from the previous forwardings). Online marketing companies "harvest" such chain mails for E-mail addresses, then sell those e-mail lists to companies who are eager to clog your inbox with junk.
Trust me, it happens. And it's no wonder: how many of us have gotten a forwarded message where the header information (including the E-mails of all past recipients) represented well over 75% of the entire message?? Even the clumsiest of E-mail scavengers can "harvest" two dozen or more working E-mails from such a note. Heck, I wish *I* had thought of that! I'd be a rich man by now.
So though my searches were time-consuming at first, the process quickly revealed a few handy sites that could categorize almost ANY incoming junk message, and determine its credibility. Rather than relegate them to my own bookmarks, I decided to code them and make them available to ANYONE who wants to check an incoming story, warning, or notice.

And that (in a nutshell) is why I bothered to create this page.

Okay, sort of "in a nutshell"....
A BIG nutshell, actually.
Probably a coconut, come to think of it.....