Happy New Year, Crimestoppers! It is my sincere wish that 2012 is a great one for you both personally and professionally (that way you can hire me for your projects, hehe). But seriously, let’s pray that 2012 is a better year for all of us.
Remember all those New Years resolutions you make and then break over and over (I know I do). Let’s start with an easy one this year that will have a world changing (yes, world changing) impact. Help reduce the amount of useless bandwidth being slung about the internet by refusing to re-post or forward email by anyone for anything. Billions and billions (thanks, Carl Sagan) of bits are being wasted on pleas for help for non-existant or misrepresented causes.
Take, for example, a recent post by my unsuspecting nephew, whose heart is in the right place (his chest). He reposted a link regarding a baby that supposedly had cancer, complete with photo. My first reaction was of course, one of sadness, but also sadly, one of suspicion. So I looked to Snopes.com for a review.
And there you go – hoax.
In addition to the tens of spam messages we receive in our inboxes everyday, somehow evading both mail server’s spam blockers as well as our own email clients, I urge you to consider to do one minute of research or less by just Googling or simply checking out these messages on Snopes.com. It’ll give us more bandwidth to stream our Netflix selections.
Be compassion-smart.