Urban Legends and Internet Hoaxes

Explore these two web sites before you answer the questions on your handout. After you have spent some time looking at them, come back to this page. There are links to the answers for most of the questions on the handout.
 
Urban Legends and Folklore
Snopes—Urban Legends and Hoaxes
1.  What are Urban Legends and Internet Hoaxes?

2.  What are some of the Current hoaxes? Follow the links from each site below to read some of the current hoaxes:

From the Urban Legends and Folklore site, you will need to click on Current Net Hoaxes or Top 25 Urban Legends links as shown in the picture below.
From the Snopes--Urban Legends and Hoaxes site, you will need to click on the word Current which appears in a black bar at the top of the screen.

3.  Describe some signs or signals that what you are reading may be a hoax.

4.  What criteria would you use to assess whether what you are reading is real or a hoax?

5.  What should you do, or where should you go,  if you get an email and you want to know if it is true or not? There is no link to this answer--you have to figure it out for yourself--but this image should give you a hint:

6. Use the Snopes Search box (as seen above) to find out the truth about these stories. Add the results to your handout:

a. hypodermic needles with AIDS
b. flesh eating bananas
c. toilet on airplane