In the last twenty-four hours, four different friends have sent me pretty much the same e-mail…
Just a reminder…from July 12, 2006, all cell phone numbers are being released to telemarketing companies and you will start to receive sale calls. YOU WILL BE CHARGED FOR THESE CALLS. To prevent this, call the following number from your cell phone: 888-382-1222. It is the National DO NOT CALL list. It will only take a minute of your time. It blocks your number for five years. HELP OTHERS BY PASSING THIS ON TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS.
Scary. But in less than twenty seconds, I found the following over at www.snopes.com, the website that tracks urban legends and hoaxes…
Despite dire warnings about the imminent release of cell phone numbers to telemarketers that continue to be circulated via e-mail year after year, no such thing is about to occur, nor do cell phone users have to register their cell phone numbers with the national Do Not Call registry before a soon-to-pass deadline to head off an onslaught of telemarketing calls. The panic-inducing e-mails (which circulate especially widely every January or June, since many versions of the warning list the end of those months as a cut-off date for registering cell phone numbers with the national Do Not Call registry) have grown out of a misunderstanding about the proposed creation of a wireless directory assistance service.
You can read the full debunking on this page but basically it says it ain't true. As far as I can tell, the Snopes people are always right about this kind of thing. When they're wrong, it tends to get corrected quickly. This particular page is more than six months old and includes links to other sources.
I get an awful lot of these. People are always sending me the essay on politics by George Carlin that Snopes says Carlin didn't write. Or they send me the comedy monologue about 9/11 by Robin Williams that Snopes says Robin Williams didn't perform. Or they send me something else that they could have found out easily is of at least questionable veracity.
Please…I appreciate the desire to share something fun or important with your friends. But before you pass on some message to everyone in your address book, take the few seconds necessary to do a search over at the Snopes site. If they say it's bogus, it probably is.