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Erumors

By Rowland Croucher and others ⋅ January 5, 2003 ⋅ Post a comment

[Dear friends

'Wes' is a reputable source

Rowland

19 December 2001].

~~~

Hello…

Last week, while being in Southern California, I met with our long-time friend, Rich Buhler, who maintains a vital web site called truthorfiction.com He shared some chilling things about the misuse of email messages being sent on to others…where you and I don’t want our names and email addresses going. I now check stories I get as “gospel truth” with this web site…and would encourage you to do the same. And getting Rich’s erumor newsletter would not be a bad idea either. All this is to encourage you in your receiving and sending that that is true and good and of encouragement. So have at it…

Blessings…

Wes

—— Forwarded Message

RE: eRumor Report

—————————————————————————- ——

Happy Holidays!

Things are hopping in eRumorland and I’ll bring you up to date later in this report, but first, I want to highlight something that is very important for each of us.

EVERY PERSON USING EMAIL IS A PUBLISHER! You may not equate sending an email message to a few family, friends, and co-workers with publishing a book or a magazine, but it’s one of the most important realities of the Internet for us all to take seriously. Every time you send an email on its way, it has been launched into the biggest publishing entity that has ever existed! Most of us don’t experience our emails going very far beyond where we sent them, but it happens to simple, private people everyday. They become what I call “unintentional cyber-celebrities.” Some of them enjoy it. Some of them are tormented by it.

Remember the eRumor in October about the threat of terrorist activity at shopping malls on Halloween? We don’t know exactly where that started, but it was not true, and one of the thousands of people who received a forwarded version of the eRumor was a young lady named Laura Katsis in Orange County, California. (http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/afgani-warning.htm) She didn’t have a particularly large list of people to send it to, but she was alarmed by it and, like many other email users, simply forwarded it to her friends. Somehow, however, of all the many versions of that eRumor that were forwarded from person to person, hers was one that got the most circulation. Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of copies of her email were spread from Pole to Pole. Each one had her name, her email address, and her work phone number. The result was that while the previous versions of the story didn’t seem to have a particular source, her version did and people thought that she was the originator. Her phone started ringing. Her email box started filling. And because both the phone and email were her employer’s, her office had to figure out a way to manage the onslaught. Laura has stopped taking messages about the incident and so has her employer. It was a very disruptive and embarrassing experience for all.

Laura is not alone.

The most widely recognized eRumor from the Attack on America is “The Last Picture Taken from Atop the World Trade Center.” (http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/lastpic.htm) As I mentioned in a previous eRumor Report, we now know who is in the picture and where it came from. It’s another example of an unintentional cyber- celebrity. Peter, the young man from Hungary who is the geeky- looking tourist in the picture, is the one who created the disaster element of it using his home computer. He did it as a joke and sent it to a few of his friends. The rest is history.

Another man who is squirming a bit right now is a chaplain-evangelist from Denver, Colorado named Bill May. He spoke at a church in the Seattle area on the weekend before the terrorist attacks. He flew home on Monday, September 10, and later that week called the pastor of the church where he had spoken and told an amazing story. May specializes in teaching Christians how to share their faith and he said that on his American Airlines flight to Denver, he had an encounter with a flight attendant who ended up making a Christian commitment before they landed. May told the pastor that after the events of September 11, he saw that flight attendant’s name on the roster of victims from one of the hijacked jets that struck the World Trade center, American Airlines flight 11. The pastor then told the story to his congregation and one of the ladies in the congregation went home and summarized the account in an email and sent it to her friends. From there, it has spread all over the Net and is still circulating. We contacted Bill May and asked him to help us authenticate the story with more information, but he declined. To be fair to him, that does not mean the story is not true, but it does raise the question of why he would want to protect such an inspirational account in the midst of tragedy. The bottom line, however, is that he told us he’s in a tight spot because he never intended for the story to become public.

The question is, how does something that was never intended to be so widely circulated become an Internet classic? The answer is there is no way of knowing for sure. Every day, there are failed attempts to create emails that the originators wish would spread all over the world. Not only does the story need to have a magic combination of ingredients that attracts people’s attention and seems credible to them, but it also depends on the luck of the draw. Each email goes through a unique pathway of being forwarded from person to person.

The power of it is that even though you and I may have only a small number of people in our address book, and each of them may have only a small number of people in theirs, the networking from person to person theoretically links everybody to everybody else. If enough people think a particular email is funny, alarming, or important enough, they’ll send it to a larger percentage of their contacts.

To take a very non-scientific, but revealing look at this, let’s apply some simple math. Nobody knows exactly how many people have forwarded any particular popular email to how many others, but it’s probably safe to say that when most of us receive something really priceless seemingly credible, we probably forward it to more than one person.

I am among the company of math dunces, but I called my brother-in- law who is a scientist who wrote a book saying Einstein was wrong, so I figured he could help.

Let’s just look at a few steps, a few levels of increasingly circulated emails.

Step one: Let’s imagine I create an email and I “publish” it to two other people. There are now two copies that have been sent over the Internet. Step two: Each of the two people I sent it to sends out two copies to a total of four people. There are now six copies on the Internet. Step three: Each of the four people sends out two copies to a total of eight people. There are now 14 copies on the Internet. Level four: Each of the eight people sends out two copies to a total of 16 people. There are now a total of 30 copies on the Internet. Level five: Each of the 16 people sends out two copies to a total of 32 people. Total is 64. And so on. By the tenth level of people forwarding only 2 emails each, there will be a total of more than 2,000 copies on the Internet. But by the twentieth level, there will be more than two million! It would take only a handful of additional levels to exceed the number of email users in the world.

Judging by all the names of previous recipients we sometimes see on forwarded emails, it’s not hard to imagine that the more popular ones are sent by each person to a lot more than just two people.

Most of us will never experience becoming cyber-celebrities, but it’s important to realize that it’s possible. We need to think like publishers and do the best we can to make sure that what we are “publishing” is as near to the facts as we can, no matter how many people will see it. We won’t always succeed, but at least that will be our goal.

Also, as a matter of self-protection, when you do forward something to others, think about whether your electronic signature may be attached that includes your name and contact information. For many in the eRumor underground, that appears to be the identity of the originator and seems to give credibility when, in fact, you are just a friend trying to help other friends.

And now…on to some of what’s happening right now.

SULFNBK.EXE False Virus Warning Read this carefully, because it’s a little confusing. There is a virus warning circulating right now that asks you to look in your Windows system directory for a file named SULFNBK.EXE and to delete it. The warning says it’s a “sleeping virus” that is sitting there waiting to do mischief to your computer. This is not true. The file SULFNBK.EXE is a Windows system file and if you delete it, you’ll have to go through a procedure to restore it. We’re not classifying this as a hoax, however, because it may have started innocently. There is a virus called that can sometimes infect the SULFNBK.EXE file. It’s likely that someone who experienced that issued a warning that the file itself is a virus. So, if you receive a warning asking you to search for and delete a file of that name that ends up being found in the Windows system directory, it’s false. If your virus protection software says that file is infected with a virus, follow your software’s instructions to correct the problem.

Here’s a Christmas one that comes around each year: The Song “The Twelve Days of Christmas” Actually Originated as an Underground Outline of Christian Doctrine-Fiction! We’ll probably get lots of emails disputing this, but none of us who research folklore and urban legends has found any good evidence of this, but there is evidence of other origins of the song. Additionally, the notion that it was a song of Christian doctrine didn’t come up until several hundred years after the song was born. The story is that there was a time in the history of the church when being a Christian or expressing certain doctrine was illegal and that the song was created as a memory device for people to use to remember doctrine without arousing suspicion. http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/twelvedaysofchristmas.htm

Help Find Penny Brown-Update! The missing child story about Penny Brown is a hoax, but there is a new version circulating that says she is the daughter of the manager of a Long’s Drugstore in California. It’s one of several adaptations that make the story seem to be connected with a real person, but none of them is true. http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/pennybrown.htm

You’ve Won a Sweepstakes Lottery in the Netherlands-Fiction! This scam has been around for quite a while but seems to be given new life from time to time. The eRumor notifies you that you have won a lottery in the Netherlands. The name of the lottery varies from version to version, but it’s always in the Netherlands. Obviously, you have never purchased such a lottery ticket, but the scammers are appealing to the part of you that would cash in on the prize anyway. They give you instructions on how to claim the prize and add that you are not to tell anyone about it. If you violate the confidentiality, they say, you’ll lose the prize. If you respond, they’ll carry you through a series of communications that seem very authentic, but at some point, will notify you of a “processing fee” that the law requires not be deducted from your winnings. Most of the time it’s between $1,000 and $2,000. You are asked to wire the money through Western Union. After the money is sent, you hear nothing of the lottery or your money again. It’s a little like the Nigerian Advance Fee Scam. In fact, just be cautious about anybody who approaches you with what seems to be a too-good-to-be true offer of money. We’ve heard, for example, from a well-known physician who was told by a foreign dignitary that there was a group of investors who wanted to provide the funds for a large, state-of-the-art medical center in the United States and that they wanted him to be the director. He became suspicious when these alleged multi-millionaires didn’t want to pay for his airline ticket to meet them in Europe and escaped a very creative and well organized advance-fee scam. They would have wined and dined him until the project was about to be funded, then asked him to come up with a large amount of money to overcome a last-minute hurdle and the thieves and his money would evaporate. http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/dutchlottery.htm

Message from a Recon Marine on the Front Lines in Afghanistan-Unproven! There is a eRumor that claims to be from a U.S. Marine in Afghanistan telling what it’s like for the guys who have been pushing into the country on the ground. Some versions refer to him as “Saucy Jack,” perhaps because of the spicey language he uses to describe what’s going on. The letter has gotten a boost in circulation because of being read on the air by a couple of San Diego radio personalities, but nobody has found a source for the letter or confirmed its authenticity. We don’t have it posted yet, but it’ll be up within a short time. You, however, as our loyal subscribers, get the scoop.

Santa’s Reindeer And finally, here’s one thrown in for free. It’s not been very widely circulated, but we’ve gotten a few requests for it even though we haven’t posted it yet. The eRumor says that both male and female reindeer grow antlers in the summer, but the males drop their antlers at the beginning of winter. The females don’t shed theirs until after they give birth in the spring. Well reindeer fans, we checked this one out with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and guess what? Every single one of the reindeer from Dasher and Dancer, and Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid, and Donner and Blitzen, and even good old Rudolph…are females. The eRumor concludes with, “We should’ve known. Only women would be able to drag a fat-_ _ _ man in a red velvet suit all around the world in one night and not get lost!