Have you ever gotten an email from a friend warning you of the next big catastrophe that is waiting for you when you open your next email? visit your favorite store? eat at a restaurant? use a product? Ever wonder if it really is true? Maybe I shouldn’t open that email with the subject of *insert most recent warning here*? Maybe I shouldn’t use *insert hot new product here*? So you decide it’s better to be safe than sorry and share that warning with all of your friends, relatives, neighbors, etc.

Well, before you hit send on your warning email to everyone on the planet, do yourself a favor and head on over to Google or better yet Snopes.com and do a search using the subject that you should be on the look out for. Or search for anything else that may be unique to that particular warning. More likely than not it’s a hoax, so save your friends and relatives some time and don’t bother passing on the warning. And, email your friend back and tell them that it’s all a lie and they have nothing to worry about.

Recently, there have been warning emails that actually mention the website snopes.com as the source of their information so be sure to check it out yourself.

It’s always better to be safe than sorry, but confirm the warning or debunk it, don’t just forward it on! If you do, you’ll save yourself the time and effort of sending an email to everyone you know as well as a ton of bandwidth which could be used for much more important things - like pictures of your new baby doing something adorably cute, or your cat, or your dog, or that naughty joke that made you laugh so hard you fell off your chair!