Snopes Review

I have been using Snopes every since I can remember getting emails.  A few short months after I started using the internet and email daily of course I was hit up with email "chain" letters, scams, hoaxes and sob stories by everyone from a Nigerian who had a million dollars they wanted to give me to free gift cards from Applebees for forwarding this message.  A friend suggested using this site, and now, not only am I older and wiser when it comes to recognizing the email equivalent of junk mail, but I am also armed with one of the best scam detectors out there. 

Snopes.com is fast and easy to use. You simply type in the subject line or a few keywords of content from your message (or even a story that someone has told you) and find out if it is fact or fiction.  You can also find out details about how this so called story started and when. I admit now I work for a consumer protection website, and one of the first things I do before writing about a bogus email message is start my fact checking and Snopes is the first place I visit. 

It would be nice if I could easily forward or "share" my findings with people, but honestly I have found that even when I do they get upset with me for pointing out the falseness of the email "Well what if it was true that this little girl is missing?"  Don't get me wrong, if forwarding one email message would help to find a missing child I would be the first person out there to do that, but let's face it we are all busy people, and we don't need our personal or professional emails junked up with scams, hoaxes or phishing schemes.  Snopes keeps track of all that for me so I don't have to, plus provides me with an excellent source to turn to when I need it.