If it's too good to be true ...

St Francis Bay freelance journalist takes a look at the other side of life in Woman on Top, her weekly lifestyle column for The Herald

There are advantages to being married to a computer guru. Marc has secret superpowers that have not only saved me from complete social and financial ruin, but make me look intolerably clever. Without him, I’d probably be just like half the world’s internet-owning population. I’d forward hoax e-mails too, before checking the facts. I’d recoil in shock at the “news article” telling me that Michael Jackson isn’t dead, really – he’s just napping. I’d enter my pin number and hit “reply” because the e-mail from my bank told me that if I didn’t, my account would be closed and used to fund a politician’s wedding (his seventh). Now that most everybody knows what fake news is, society is improving somewhat. But no matter how much cyberspace is saturated with top tips for sorting tall stories from the truth, tens of thousands of well-meaning women across several continents are still being taken for a ride. I used to be nailed, too. Not by those e-mail chain letters obviously, since everybody knows (I hope) that you’re not going to be struck down by a mortal plague if you don’t pass on this sickly-sweet ode to friendship to at least 20 people within six minutes. It’s the serious hackers who do the most damage to innocent internet users everywhere. And it’s become my sworn duty to protect them, as I would a band of sisters. Because, let’s face it, women are a soft touch. I know – I’ve been there. Take the “missing/abducted/kidnapped” hoaxes that crop up every few months, around about that time when you are horribly hormonal and feeling protective. If something very official-looking arrives in your in-box, with a fancy signature stuck on the end, telling you that a three-year-old was last seen two days ago in the presence of a white van in your neighbourhood, you’d likely want to help. It’s in our nature. So we dutifully pass it on, providing a host of faceless sickos with even more e-mail addresses, which they supposedly harvest, like so much genetic material in a horror movie, for nefarious (or advertising) purposes. The reasonably savvy among us know that any letter starting with “Dearly Beloved, I write to you from the outer reaches of Bongolia and want to give you a lot of money”, are probably false. The more seasoned types, like me, also know that, no, a famous cell phone or software company is not, by any stretch of imagination, going to give you a smartphone or spanking new laptop just because you lazily forwarded said Whatsapp to a thousand of your closest friends. But still, for every educated step we take forward, a bunch of us take two steps back. Not a week goes by without me receiving, from trusted, friendly sources, those e-mails bleating warnings about poison being leaked into cans of beans from Pretoria to Pofadder, or an “OMG! If you raise your right arm too fast, you will die in 90 seconds! Don’t try this at home! Even though you really want to! This is for real! It is NOT a hoax! Please forward to a gazillion people and save a life! An actual doctor swears by this!” I know that there really is tragedy out there and that as a global community, we can use the power of our send buttons to make the world a better place. But please, before you copy me in to your campaign, visit www.snopes.com or pay my husband R500 per hour to blow holes in that e-mail about the dinosaur found wandering around Rosebank Mall. When in doubt, delete.