Too good to be true? It probably isn't

Funny, how it always happens around tax time ...

The one that set this one off, for once, was not a phishing scam for your social security number or a myth about deducting your tattoo bill from your income tax.

My husband gets his orders for the next day's work faxed to home and I came home one day to find a message from his boss on top of the itinerary. This isn't the exact version he sent, but it's close enough:

"In just 4 days from today, there will be a registry published of all cell phone numbers. All U. S. cell phone numbers will be released to telemarketing companies and you will begin to receive sales calls. You will be charged for these calls! Even if you do not answer, the telemarketer will end up in your voice mail and you will be charged for all of the minutes the incoming (usually recorded) message takes to complete. You will then also be charged when you call your voice mail to retrieve your messages.

"To prevent this, call 888-382-1222 from your cell phone. This is the national DO NOT CALL list; it takes only a minute to register your cell phone number and it blocks most telemarketers calls for five years."

Barbie moment

I confess to a journalistic Barbie moment. Because this came from my husband's boss and looked quite official, I brought the matter to our city editor, John Carney, and suggested we do a story on the registration and do not call lists. Then he did exactly what I should have done.

He visited snopes.com. Snopes is a great urban/cyber mythbuster, especially when it comes to things like this. Every time I get an e-mail urging me to send get well cards to some child in England, help Nigerian princes in exile, or wanting to tell me that the security of a bank account I don't even have has been compromised, I check Snopes. I'm not sure why I slipped up this time.

The truth on the cell phone story is this (according to Snopes) :

"Cell phone numbers have generally been excluded from printed telephone books and directory assistance services. However, since the use of cell phones has burgeoned in recent years (to the point that many people no longer maintain landline phone service), several national wireless companies banded together and hired Qsent, Inc. to produce a Wireless 411 service. Their goal was to pool their listings to create a comprehensive directory of cell phone customer names and phone numbers that would be made available to directory assistance providers. But --

"The Wireless 411 service was to be strictly 'opt-in' -- that is, cell phone customers would be included in the directory only if they specifically request to be added. The phone numbers of wireless customers who did nothing would not be included, those who chose to be listed could have their numbers removed from the directory if they changed their minds, and there was no charge for requesting to be included or choosing not to be included.

"The Wireless 411 information was not to be included in printed phone directories, distributed in other printed form, made available via the Internet, or sold to telemarketers. It would be made available only to operator service centers performing the 411 directory assistance service."

We won't even bring up that fact that the registry was to have gone into effect four years ago ... or the fact that it's illegal for marketers using auto-dialers -- and most do -- to call wireless phone numbers.

Not always right

Of course, Snopes isn't always right, and the administrators of that web site will be the first ones to tell you so. They even have a few deliberately bogus entries just to keep you on your toes. Don't believe me? Check this one out: www.snopes.com/lost/mistered.asp.

Using the same, matter-of-fact approach, the Snopes scholars tell us that Mister Ed was not a horse. He was, in fact, a zebra. The entry is full of scientific quotes and references to optical illusions. It's also full of bovine waste material.

After you've waded all the way through the hilarious dissertation of equine mythification, there is a little note at the bottom of the page. In red letters, it says "More information on this page."

Click it, and you end up on a page where Snopes shakes its finger at you in gentle good humor.

"Common sense dictates you should never fully rely upon someone else do fact checking for you," the page states. "But who has time for common sense?"

Check it online

Snopes is a good source to check out those cell phone rumors, Nigerian princes and telemarketing scams. But there's also the consumer advocacy sites, such as he Federal Trade Commission's consumer trade protection site, www.ftc.gov/bcp/consumer.shtm, where they can catch those bank account phishers who are conning us out of hundreds of dollars. Of course, they have a slightly harder time catching the Ponzi schemers who are conning us out of millions ...

Snopes said it best -- just use some common sense, and don't believe anyone who wants you to send money for anything, even the IRS. Oh, you still have to send the IRS money -- but you don't have to believe them!