Reclaim Your Sense of Safety From Hoaxers

A virus that will 'burn your hard drive' if you click on a logo. Black vans outside schools abducting children. People stealing dogs from front gardens to use as bait in dog fighting. Young women being kidnapped at motorway service stations and gang-raped as part of an initiation into gang culture. We've all seen warnings about these scenarios in email or Facebook status form. Well meaning individuals pass these on because it is a natural human quality to warn friends and family of imminent danger. What's wrong with that?

All the above scenarios and many, many more are hoaxes, started by individuals who have a warped sense of success. The more reposts and forwards they get, the better they like it. Some of these stories have gone round the world: the planned kidnapping of a young lady from services on the M3 becomes a truck stop in Australia. The wording stays the same, just the geographic locations change.

Quote: This actually happened a few weeks ago right here near Fairfield in Brisbane. It was early evening and a young lady stopped to get petrol at a Quix. She filled her tank and walked into the store to pay for her petrol. The cashier told her "Don't pay for your petrol yet.....walk around the store for a while and act as if you're picking up some other things to buy. A man just got into the back of your car. I've called the police and they're on their way".

Quote: This actually happened a few weeks ago on the M3 FLEET SERVICES!!! It was early evening, and a young girl stopped to get petrol. She filled her tank and walked into the store to pay for her petrol.. The cashier told her, 'Don't pay for your petrol yet......walk around the store for a while, and act as if you're picking up some other things to buy. A man just got into the back of your car. I've called the police, and they're on their way'.

One of the ways human beings assess risk is through 'salience': the ease with which information comes to mind. For example, you are more likely to assess air travel as a risky activity if there has recently been news about a plane crash, despite the fact that air travel statistically remains much safer than travel by car. Equally, stories about kidnapping or child murders will raise our perceived risk of these things happening, despite statistics which show that both of these remain highly unlikely. If we live in a climate of fear, we stop our kids from going out to play and we don't go out at night. What kind of society do we want to live in?

How can we stop this? First and foremost, common sense. For example, if you Google the first two lines of the email/status above, you will be pointed to several sites which debunk this information. Secondly, if you are asked to forward the information to all your friends and the people in your email address book, you can be practically certain that you are the victim of a hoax. Spend a little time processing the information: for example the post about the M3 kidnapper contains the information that the perpetrator was caught by the police, confessed that he was just about to kidnap and gang-rape the young lady, but was released because all they could charge him with was trespass. Does this seem likely? He has just conspired to commit a serious crime and was attempting to do the same. He would have been charged with conspiracy or attempted rape.

This is our country, and we have the right to live in it unafraid and without having to spend our lives in dread of the supposedly terrible things that are happening all around us. Let's reclaim our lives and our space for ourselves and our children.