Cellphone based e-mail hoax

It seems as though I will always be able to turn to hoax e-mails when my idea store runs dry. And even when it does not. I recently received an e-mail with the following warning letter attached;

Urgent Warning from Cell C, Vodacom & MTN!

Dear All, If you receive a phone call on your mobile from any person, saying that, he or she is a company engineer, or saying that they’re checking your mobile line, and you have to press # 90 or #09 or any other number. End this call immediately without pressing any numbers. There is a fraud company using a device that once you press #90 or #09 they can access your ‘SIM’ card and make calls at your expense. Forward this message to as many friends as you can, to stop it. All mobile users pay attention if you receive a phone call and your mobile phone displays (XALAN) on the screen don’t answer the call, END THE CALL IMMEDIATELY, if you answer the call, your phone will be infected by a virus.. This virus will erase all IMEI and IMSI information from both your phone and your SIM card, which will make your phone unable to connect with the telephone network. You will have to buy a new phone. This information has been confirmed by both Motorola and Nokia.

PLEASE FORWARD THIS PIECE OF INFORMATION

TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS HAVING A MOBILE

I have reformatted the e-mail so as not to blind you with the font colours used (bright red and lime green). I have also left out the personal details of Amesh Singh, the person listed as a contact for the Special Investigating Unit, in whose name the above letter is distributed.

I will quickly run through the reasons for why this is a hoax e-mail;

1. I have spoken to Mr. Amesh Singh in person and he confirmed with me that he is not the author of this communication. His business card is being used fraudulently to lend credence to this e-mail. While he cannot confirm the technical details regarding the codes etc, he very firmly wishes to emphasise that his name is being used fraudulently. This letter has been circulating for over a year and Mr. Singh has a taken legal action with the high court and department of communication in this regard.

This fact in isolation is enough to immediately disregard the rest of the e-mail, together with the claims contained therein. However, I will look at a few other red flags to help you spot these hoaxes in future.

2. It is written terribly. The font colours are hideous and the grammar is awful. All together this letter is highly unprofessional, not at all what you would expect from the Legal Representative of the Special Investigative Unit of a governmental department. This is the single most obvious sign that this letter was written by someone with malicious intent.

3. They try to prevent you from doing your own research by saying that it is already confirmed by cellular providers. Once again, anyone who wants you to take their words at face value should probably not be trusted. That includes me.

4. Typical of all hoax e-mails is the attempt to spread panic. The fraud company (what kind of stupid conman would set up a company? Apart from Amway, and all the homeopaths in the world.) will run up a huge phone bill on your account, your phone will be rendered impotent by a virus and you will have to buy another one. I have an acronym for this; they are FUD artists, trying to spread Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.

5. Last but not least you are urged to spam this misinformation on to all your friends. This is another glaring red-flag. If you see this you should immediately be sceptical and question what you are reading.

When you receive e-mails like this, please be sensible, don’t spread them to all your friends, just press delete!

Your future in a deck of cards?

My experience with the paranormal was broadened last week when I was privileged enough to have a tarot card reading performed for myself. The tarot reader knows some of my friends quite well and they have all been rather impressed with their results. I am a vocal sceptic, but I also try to maintain an open mind (but not open enough for my brain to fall out).

Up until now the tarot reader has argued that my sceptical energy would block her powers and she would get a dead reading. The alert sceptic will recognise this as a special pleading, whereby the paranormal believer tries to provide a convincing sounding reason for why his / her own particular brand of woo is not working right now.

Tarot cards are used a a divination tool, practitioners believe that the tarot deck has the ability to provide answers to specific questions, as well as having the ability to pinpoint future events with “remarkable accuracy”. Unfortunately, I did not have a specific question to ask the tarot reader on this occasion, as a result she chose to use a arrangement called the “soaring eagle spread” as this is supposedly a good layout for general fortunetelling and such.

The tarot reader, let us call her Michelle, shuffled the cards, then handed them to me to shuffle. I was told that this is what imparts my energy into the deck and allows the magic of the cards to see into my particular future. I dutifully shuffled the cards a few times and handed them back to Michelle. She shuffled them again and started to lay them out in the wide “V” of the soaring eagle spread.

I will spare you all of the details and just give you the result of my reading. Michelle inferred from the cards which she drew for me that I have a good relationship with my family, that I feel as though I give a lot of myself and receive very little in return, that I may also feel as though my life is not heading in the right direction, but that I have guides (who I cannot see) which are leading me in the right direction (literally “your boat is being guided towards the stars”). One card told Michelle that I am a very strong person, another that I will have to make a decision which may seem selfish but which is for my own good. Michelle also felt that my father is very important to me.

At this point I think it is important for me to reveal my trickery. I have known since I met Michelle (about a year ago) that she reads tarot cards and as a result I have been very careful NOT to divulge any personal information to her. Devious, I know, but I wanted to make sure that she would not have background info for when she did a reading. It would have to be a cold reading. I noticed that all of the people I know who were impressed by Michelle’s readings had been quite liberal with their personal details on many occasions, independent of her readings. They were impressed by her when she was doing HOT readings.

From Wikipedia (oh infinite source of knowledge);

Cold reading is a technique used by mentalists and fortune tellers, psychics, and mediums to determine details about another person in order to convince them that the reader knows much more about a subject than he or she actually does. Even without prior knowledge of a person, a practiced cold reader can still quickly obtain a great deal of information about the subject by carefully analyzing the person’s body language, clothing or fashion, hairstyle, gender, sexual orientation, religion, race or ethnicity, level of education, manner of speech, place of origin, etc. Cold readers commonly employ high probability guesses about the subject, quickly picking up on signals from their subjects as to whether their guesses are in the right direction or not, and then emphasizing and reinforcing any chance connections the subjects acknowledge while quickly moving on from missed guesses.

Hot reading is the use of foreknowledge when giving a “psychic” reading in stage magic performances. The reader can gain information about the sitter (person getting the reading) through a variety of means, such as research or overhearing a conversation. Hot reading is commonly used in conjunction with cold reading (where no foreknowledge is available) and can explain how a psychic reader can get a specific claimed “hit” of accurate information.

I was not impressed by Michelle’s attempted tarot reading. Her supposed interpretation of the cards she dealt for me was so hideously non-specific that I had a hard time preventing myself from calling her out on the spot. I can see how easy it would be for someone a little more gullible then me to subconsciously apply their personal experiences to the cards, to search their memories for instances which ring true with the reading.

I also think a large part of Michelle’s success comes from the fact that people are reticent to tell her outright that she is wrong. I myself felt a pang of disappointment and did not want to insult her by telling her that she had missed the mark. I quickly got over it though and I told her that the reading she had done was not accurate. She did not invoke a special pleading to try and justify her poor performance, from this I think it is reasonable to infer that my sceptical energy did not “block her spirit guides” and that she felt confident about her reading.

This is the part of the post where I am going to get serious. if you are sympathetic towards tarot cards and other forms of divination, you might be sitting there scratching your head and asking yourself “What is so wrong with a little introspection? Tarot is harmless, it doesn’t hurt anybody.”

I disagree with you. I have seen someone get hurt very badly by a well-meaning tarot reading. She was told something she was desperate to believe and when it did not come to pass she was devastated. I saw the reading, I watched her over the following few weeks as she got her hopes up and I tried to instill a little rationality in the situation. Her response was “I know it’s all interpretive, but I want to believe“. It made me very angry to see someone I care for get hurt so badly, I can only hope that she is more cautious the next time.

I will end off with a quote from The Amazing, James Randi;

For use as a divinatory device, the Tarot deck is dealt out in various patterns and interpreted by a gifted “reader.” The fact that the deck is not dealt out into the same pattern fifteen minutes later is rationalized by the occultists by claiming that in that short span of time, a person’s fortune can change, too. That would seem to call for rather frequent readings if the system is to be of any use whatsoever.

I’m back at last!

It has been six very long weeks since my phone cables were stolen by copper thieves. Today Telkom finally got everything back in working order and I am finally connected to the real world again. One thing which has become apparent to me during my forced isolation is just how dependent I am on the internet.

I’d like to share a few things with you briefly before I get started on a meaty post. First of all, I have found an absolutely fantastic website for all of you creationists and non-creationists out there. The Talk Origins archive is the online version of a little book known as the Counter Creationist Handbook. This work of sheer brilliance addresses every conceivable creationist argument in a thorough and well though out manner. It is essential reading for people on both sides of the debate. Enjoy!

Yesterday, the 16th of December, saw the launch of the Centre For Inquiry’s blog site. The CFI is a global federation committed to science, reason, free inquiry, secularism, and planetary ethics. From their nwsletter;

Consistent with CFI’s mission, the blog will offer uninhibited, unsparing, and provocative observations and insights on a variety of topics of interest to CFI and its supporters—including the supporters of CFI’s two principal affiliates, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and the Council for Secular Humanism.

I logged onto my facebook account today and found a great compliment on my “BlogNetworks” application;

a fine conversational debunking of the mythologies believers spread uncritically, a rational woman on an irrational culture, keep up the good work Angela, peace, Larry in Charleston, SC USA

Thank you very much Larry, there is nothing I enjoy more than positive feedback! Ok, maybe there are a few things, but we won’t go into that here.

Last but not least I would like to leave you with a quote by Robert Blatchford, an author who lived from 1851to1943;

Religions are not revealed: they are evolved. If a religion were revealed by God, that religion would be perfect in whole and in part, and would be as perfect at the first moment of its revelation as after ten thousand years of practice. There has never been a religion that which fulfills those conditions.