My Pet Peeve

Like nearly everyone, I hate spam. According to an online article 7 Things You Didn’t Know About Email Spam Worldwide, “Roughly 130 billion spam emails are sent, worldwide, per day, accounting for roughly 70% of global emailing activity.” www.perimetec.com/7-Things-You-Didnt-Know-About-Email-Spam-Worldwide.php  What bothers me even more though are the many “facts” on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, social and network marketing sites and the like, or sent by email, where the poster just copied it from somewhere else without ever researching the supposed facts. In fact many are untrue or only partially true. We have all seen them. How about the one about why weddings are often held in June. The post states that is because people in centuries past didn’t bathe more than once a year, so they were married just past bath time. Oh yes, and the bride carries a bouquet to mask their odor. People pass on these posts, not realizing that not only did people bathe “way back then,” but they even had public bath houses. I saw one yesterday about how many mass murders were prevented by people who were carrying guns and stopped the shooters. I was curious about that, so I researched it, and although I only found information about a few of the ten or so incidents related in the post, in each situation, the description provided was either totally untrue or only partially true. During the United States General Election, emails and social networking sites were full of outrageous untrue stories about what one candidate or the other did. Unfortunately, people believe what they want to believe. So, the stories were reposted repeatedly and sent via email to everyone on their contact lists. I primarily rely on  snopes.com to determine the veracity of a post or email. Until I’ve checked it out myself, I will not forward “urban myths.” I’ve even seen outrageous posts that have “I checked this out myself on snopes.com” at the end. When I personally check it out though, around 90% of those posts turn out to be untrue. Millions – perhaps even billions of “normal” spam email is every month. In fact, only a very small percentage of email is NOT spam. According to an article published by the Information Security Office at the University of Texas at El Paso ( admin.utep.edu/Default.aspx?tabid=64462 ), in the month of July 2012,”7,973,389 email messages. 6,476,110 of these messages were identified as Spam by our filters, 18,270 as Suspected Spam, and 391,374 as Marketing - Total of 6,494,380 (81.4%) Spam.” Imagine for a moment how much faster the Internet would be if these millions upon millions of spam were not sent. Imagine if you opened your email, and everything in your inbox was something you wanted or expected to be there. How much time would you be saving if you didn’t have to delete all that spam? How much more trustworthy would you find Facebook, et al if people did not share and pass along lies, half-truths and exaggerations without first verifying them? I love having email and the various forums and social networking sites. I do wish though that I didn’t have to filter all the spam (my email system does a lot of it) and read posts with a skeptical eye and research them to see if they are true. Would you join me in NOT forwarding emails and posts unless you are certain that the facts are true? ******************************* To learn about Julie Klein and the Xpress Healthcare Business Opportunity, please visit joinxpresshealthcare.com . You can work from home and earn residual income. To learn how to Save Money on Your Health and Dental Costs AND Save on Hearing, Vision, Prescriptions, Roadside Assistance, Lifelock™ and much more, please visit  ibourl.net/XpressSavings (NOT insurance)