I received another one of those crazy emails today telling me to be aware of yet another type of crime being committed. This one has been going around for some time now. I've gotten the same email forwarded to me, which I don't open any more, and know it was a copied and pasted email sent to at least a few thousand people already. According to the email, gangs have instituted a new way to initiate new gang members. Some member of the gang will drive the initiate around town at night with the headlights turned off. Most drivers who see a car without the headlights on will flash their headlights at the other driver as a way to say "Hey dude, turn on your lights". The first driver to flash their headlights will be the target. The gang will chase down the "flasher" and the newest gang initiate kills the driver.
      Please don't believe everything you read. This email is nothing more than a hoax, unless some gang finally decided "What a brilliant idea". Hey, they already have enough ideas, why give them more? This email is based on the same source of information as many of the other hoaxes ... misinformation, stories blown out of proportion, or outright lies. Then there are the people who have nothing better to do with their time then to sit around making up outrageous stories, emailing the final result to a few friends, and then sitting back waiting to hear how many other people have heard the story and believe it to be true.
     You weren't fooled by that one? What about the hundreds of other stories running through cyberspace? If true, no one would ever be busted for a DUI because all you have to do to beat the breathalyzer is suck on a handful of pennies or eat an onion. If the number of occurrences are to be believed, every time we walked into a parking lot at a mall, we'd see at least two or three people laying under cars waiting for the owners to come back so they can cut their ankles and jack the car. And one of my all time favorites ... there are people out there being paid by doctors to locate drivers who are organ donors and kill them so the organs can be harvested. I take that back. My favorite stories are the warnings about security companies placing spy cameras in the motion sensors so they can watch your every move or monitoring the system so they know when you're gone so they can break into your house.
     Why don't you hear about these things on the local news? Because they never happened. If you do hear something about it on the news, why do they always happen somewhere far away from you? Because some reporter heard the story and made the report without verifying the reports. And why is it when a friend or relative tells you about one of these stories, it never happened to them? Why is it always happening to a friend of a friend of an aunt of your boss' second cousin? Because they don't want you to know the person which in turn keeps you from verifying the story yourself. More than likely, they heard the story from one of those emails that have been circulating around the internet for the past several years.
     Before you pass on emails about the latest virus alert, crime spree, or disease outbreak, check the facts. One of the best sources of information can be found at http://snopes.com. There's enough real crime out there to scare most people, why add to the list by forwarding emails about things which are nothing more than urban legends?