Internet hoax deceives NY debaters

[RoadRunner]

A moderator in the Hillary Rodham Clinton/Rick Lazio debate asked the first lady what she thought of federal bill 602P. Mrs. Clinton had never heard of it. The moderator went on to tell her that the bill would allow the US Postal Service to bill e-mail users 5 cents for each email that is sent.

Both Clinton and Lazio were against such a bill.

Guess what? That is a hoax that circulated last year. It had people complaining to Congress, the USPS, and the FCC. The USPS even had to issue a statement calling the whole thing a false rumor. There is no such bill.

Read more about it at ABC News (http://abcnews.go.com/sections/politics/DailyNews/hoax001008.html).

What internet hoaxes have you gotten fooled by?

[jamesglewisf]

I got burned by a hoax about a year ago. It was one of those email hoaxes warning about a virus. I sent a copy of it to my friend who worked at Microsoft. He told me to ignore it, and I have ever since.

You can check out a lot of them at www.urbanlegends.com.

[TWTCommish]

Wow! Rumors are always there, but it made it into the debate? That's wild...and yes, email rumors are the least credible of all. How did chain letters ever get started without the Internet? :)

[sleon]

Once at church, our pastor related an internet hoax as a true story to the congregation. It was the one about how "some scientists at NASA were calculating the positions of the stars over history, and they found some missing time, and where they found time was missing was during the era of Joshua..." blah blah blah. My husband and I were SO mortified that the pastor would just take that out of an email that a friend gave him from the internet and then USE IT in church without even checking to verify the story. (Not to mention that if you're even the slightest bit schooled in these matters, you should realize how STUPID that story sounds.) The pastor was trying to use this story to back up an apologetics sermon on "proofs" for God. I have to tell you, if I had not already been a Christian, and I had heard that stuff in a church I was visiting, I would have walked out of there totally firmly convinced that Christians are stupid and their religion is a waste of time.

Moral of the story: don't cite hoax stories as proof of the existence of God, especially in a public arena, LOL! (And before forwarding email, ask yourself, "What would Jesus forward?")

[jamesglewisf]

Yikes! I don't believe much of anything I get by email. I've finally just asked my frienda and family members to take me off their email lists and only use email for personal matters.

[heartcall]

This goes back to an old saying... don't believe everything you read. Sounds like good advice!