Why Indiscriminately Forwarding Warnings Is A Bad Thing

I seem to recall that there was a particular car model that had some faulty wiring in it, the upshot of which was that if you happened to get rear-ended while you had the turn signal on, sparks would occur and there was a high likelihood that the gas tank would explode. Even if I'm misremembering, or if this is just another urban legend (I know this scenario was used as a movie plot anyway) let's say such a car actually existed, because it illustrates my point well.

Let's imagine that some well-intentioned soul sends out a warning message to everyone he/she knows saying "If you have a '95 JunkHeap, DON'T DRIVE WITH THE TURN SIGNAL ON! If you get rear-ended while the turn signal is on your gas tank is very likely to explode. Take your car in to your dealer immediately to have this repaired!!! Forward this to anyone you know who has a '95 JunkHeap!!"

Remember the game of "telephone" we played as children? You get a large group of people in a circle. The first person whispers a phrase into the second person's ear, the second person whispers the phrase as they heard it into the third person's ear, etc. By the time you reach the end of the circle the phrase has usually mutated into something phonetically similar to the original phrase but with completely different (and often meaningless) words.

This happens with warning messages too. The attribution to the original author gets lost, people modify or embellish the message with their own experiences, perceptions, or beliefs (right or wrong), etc. Before you know it, the message above has changed into "If you have ANY JunkHeap regardless of model year, ..." and then "Don't drive any car with a turn signal on! In fact, don't make any left turns with or without your turn signal on!"

Notice what has happened here: this started out with something that actually WAS true, although it affected a fairly well-defined set of people under a fairly-well set of circumstances, but it is now clouded with all sorts of extraneous baggage that has been added along the way.

In particular, think about the likely effects of the message in its new, vague, and inaccurate form:

• people will waste time and resources sending this warning back and forth to each other (including both the man-hours spent doing it, and the paper/electricity/whatever used to convey it)
• car dealerships will be flooded with people demanding repairs to their cars, including lots of people who don't even own a '95 JunkHeap (which is the only model actually affected by this problem)
• everyone will start driving around without using their turn signals and making 3 right turns instead of turning left (wait, this is already true in San Francisco), thus creating hazardous traffic situations

I don't think this is a good state of affairs, do you? And this developed out of something that was actually true. Now consider that there are a lot of made-up warnings and hoaxes floating around created by people who want to see how gullible we can be.

So what's an Good Samaritan to do? If you really think a warning message is important enough to send to lots of people (and remember that if you urge them all to send it to everyone they know, there is an exponential growth factor here), make sure it's accurate. If it concerns an area in which you lack expertise, ask someone you know who is qualified. Don't forward a warning unless it comes from someone whose opinion you can trust. It's not good enough if the warning comes from someone you know, because often they are just telling you something that they heard from someone else, who heard it from their barber, who heard it from his son's friend's niece's teacher's cousin twice removed, etc.

Here's a few links to other sites with good information concerning virus warnings, hoaxes, and such:

• Don't Spread that Hoax!
• The Good Times Virus Hoax FAQ
• The CIAC Internet Hoaxes page
• The alt.folklore.urban FAQ and Urban Legends Listing
• McAfee/Network Associates virus information library and virus hoax information