Expand open source reach

I received earlier today a message from my oncle, on which several people were copied. It informed me that if I receive a call from "A C E" my SIM phone card would be wiped out and that if I got a phone message telling me to call back the phone number "06 07 74 52 41" (my uncle is French :) ) my phone bill would jump to the roof. Furthermore he asserted that one of his good friend (that he named in his e-mail) assured him after contacting Nokia, Erikson, Sagem, Motorola and so on that the rumor is true...

Such a warning could seem quite scary...I decided I would never pick up my cell again!

BUT... WAIT A MINUTE...

Careful as I always am, I decided to do a bit of research to double check the facts. I diligently went to google, searched for "ACE hoax" and found the following article: Mobile phone hoax or this one Virus Information ACE - Mobile Phone Hoax for instance (Notice the "Type: Hoax" written in those reports).

Confident that my search would unveil other comforting news, I decided to search in Google again "06 07 74 52 41" and found the following articles: Piratage portables,
Type: Rumeur,Statut: Faux

As a conclusion, I will probably repeat what many have already said before me, but can always serve those who are not yet familiar with what the web can bring us in terms of misinformation. We don't need to go as far as Descartes and consider everything around us is potential illusion - even if so it might be true, quite frankly :) - but if we all complete some fact checking, that can spare us some worries... as well as spam, spyware or virus spreading. And the best tools for fact checking are search engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN search... ordered according to my personal preference) and sites like Hoaxbuster.com

For those who would like to go even more in depth, there is also this interesting article: Better Read That Again: Web Hoaxes and Misinformation

Finally, for those of you who are ready to make the big jump and figure out what is or is not illusion as Descartes did, all you have to say is "Tabula rasa"...