Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Alert: Tips on pumping petrol try it you might be saving money

A thoughtful family member passed on an email with the subject Tips on pumping petrol try it you might be saving money. I find if you receive an email that encourages you to pass it on to large numbers of people it is generally a hoax of some type and you should hesitate before sending it on.

The best thing to do if you do receive such as an email and feel like sending it on, then do a bit of research first. In this case I took the subject of the email and copied that into Google Search. I found the following page which provides further information.

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/household/gastips.asp

From the information provides is shows that saving money using the suggestions made will generate negligible savings for the time involved.

The intent of this type of email has no harm but simply to get people to take action and virally generate traffic by passing the information on. Those taking action based on the information will most likely be wasting their time.

For me the concern with this email is it appeared to have been faked and was adjusted to be from Melbourne where the sender and their contacts are located. That is a real concern to me. This is targeted viral marketing and whilst this email’s content may have no real value it is a concern that it is targeted. The change in location gives people a feeling the information content is legitimate. The changing of the location and also the word petrol is used whereas the other versions for America would use the term gas. Localising the information for the language of a country is unusual, but localised it further for the geographic location of the recipient  raises some warning signs with regards to future hoaxes, and viral spam marketing.

If you receive information of this type I’d highly recommend you do not forward it on to others. Whilst in this case probably the worst outcome is people will waste some of their time for little return, in other cases the content may be harmful.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au

 

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