Sunday 16 January 2011

Morning Scepticism: Spam

While I know the dangers of opening spam email, occasionally I take a look in my spam folder at the kind of thing that constitutes automatic filtering. While no doubt some is garbage, it's interesting reading the genuine sales pitches that clearly are frauds. Sometimes it really doesn't take a lot to sucker people in, the promise of vast wealth at a minimal investment seems to override the basic incredulity of the premise. This is why critical thinking is such an important idea to get out there. With a few simple heuristics, it gives basic protection from what could really cause harm.

There might be a sucker born every minute, but why should we be fatalistic about it? A few words might mean the difference between being suckered in and being critical.

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