Four Ways to Win the Battle Against Urban Legends and Hoaxes

Issue No. 13

You’ve probably gotten an email that says that a “friend of a friend” or “my co-workers golf partner” or “my sister’s hairdresser” said to beware of flashing your headlights at a car whose lights are not turned on. The email, which is often a few paragraphs long, goes on to say that this is a gang ritual and that if you flash your headlights at the oncoming car, the car will follow you and the alleged gang members inside will murder you. This email that you’ve received is called an urban legend (UL).

This typical UL includes some common characteristics:

  • Attributed to a reliable source, that is, a “friend of a friend” or “my co-workers golf partner,” etc.
  • Odd but possibly believable (or in other cases, it is too good to be true).
  • Narrative form.
  • Includes a warning.
  • Appears in many places with slight variations, such as multiple varied copies in your inbox, or varied copies received over a period of time.

What is an urban legend? According to David Emery on the urbanlegends.about.com web site, an urban legend is “a popular story, humorous, ironic or horrifying and often taking the form of a cautionary tale, which varies in the telling but is always told as true and usually attributed to a secondhand or thirdhand ("friend of a friend") source.” Some of these urban legends are harmless. However, some of the ULs can cause negative reactions. For example,

  • Urban legends can affect businesses. An urban legend that is still circulating on the Internet ties Caribou Coffee to Islamic terrorists and affects the company’s business volume and expansion plans according to the article Minn. Coffee chain battles rumor of terrorist link published in the Chicago Tribune on May 23, 2004. In another business example, Proctor and Gamble changed their logo after persistent rumors that their logo was linked with the devil.
  • The UL about the headlights could cause a person to refrain from using a courtesy flash to alert another driver to the fact that they are driving without lights on, a dangerous situation in any case.

Urban legends are not a new phenomenon, they have just gotten a new life with the advent of email and the Internet. One of the first urban legends we hear as children is often the “alligators flushed down New York City toilets thrive in the sewers,” the “Kentucky Fried Chicken rat,” or the “spider, or tick, in the hair.” In fact, there is a 13th century reference to the “spider in the hair” UL cited in a paper by Shirley Marchalonis titled “Three Medieval Tales and their Modern American Analogues” (reprinted in J.H. Brunvand’s “Readings in American Folklore,” W.W. Norton: 1979). As you can see, some of these urban legends have been around longer than others.

What is the difference between an urban legend and a hoax? Again, according to David Emery, a hoax is “an act, document or artifact intended to deceive the public. Examples range from relatively benign instances of trickery, such as April Fools pranks, to scientific fraud on a grand scale.” Unfortunately, hoaxes can often have more severe consequences than ULs. For example,

  • One hoax describes a person from Nigeria, in variations including a widow of a head of state, a director of a bank, or the friend of a minister, who has a large amount of money from corrupt government or business dealings. The senders of the email are willing to share the money with you if you help them get it out of the country by giving them your bank account number, which they use to steal, not to share. Unfortunately, many people have fallen for the hoax and have lost large amounts of money this way.
  • Another popular hoax describes a file that can be found on your computer, and the hoax directs you to remove the file. For example, a recent hoax described a file, JDBGMGR.EXE, as being a virus. This is similar to a hoax from 2001 that described the SULFNBK.EXE file as a virus. Both these files are valid operating system files and should not be deleted from your operating system. For anyone who has deleted these files, the Microsoft.com web site contains instructions describing if you need to and how to restore these files.

Many of these ULs and hoaxes often have their source in a truth. But just like children playing the game telephone, as the message is passed on, it becomes exaggerated and various untruths get added to it. Like children, adults like to pass on a juicy story when they hear it. And in using email, adults often contribute to the large volume of spam that is the scrouge of the Internet, especially when the UL comes in the form of an email chain letter.

What can you do to combat urban legends and hoaxes?

  1. Do not forward any questionable emails to friends.
  2. Figure out whether the story is true. You can go to one of the following web sites: Norton.com then select Site Index and select Hoaxes, UrbanLegends.about.com, or Snopes.com. Search for a particular term or a specific word associated with the UL or hoax. The sites usually show a copy and variations of the emails promoting the fallacy and also discuss why or why not the email is an urban legend or a hoax.
  3. Don’t provide personal information such as your social security number, credit card number, or bank account number, from requests via email. Legitimate companies do not request this sort of information via email.
  4. Gently educate those who aren’t familiar with urban legends and hoaxes. Explain to them what ULs and hoaxes are, and send them the web sites listed in this article. Suggest that they check these sites first before passing on an email.

Remember - Don’t forward emails that you suspect as being ULs or hoaxes to friends or even enemies. You just might get that chain letter back in your inbox in the morning.

 


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