Reading Report #1

Web hoaxes and counterfeit websites are definitely a problem in my mind. The first thing mentioned in the reading was about counterfeit sites such as makah.org. These sites are definitely dangerous in this day and age where so many people get their information from the internet alone and as far as I’m concerned, as long as the site looks legit and comes across as factual, I will most likely believe it. This can spread many rumors and lies about a group or a person that may be hard to shed. It also shows me that I must be very very careful in doing research papers since so much of the information out there is untrue and many of it skewed to advertise something. People often take issues and form websites that skew the information to prove their point as in the site pointed out in the reading about the skeleton and how it was made in one website to show white supremacy. This reading also helped to show me how gullible people can be, although I can certainly understand since I have seen many of those videos on 9/11 and photos from that day and must say that at first you want to believe it and many people put up such compelling arguments that it is very easy to believe, especially when they start using facts and documents. It is very important in my opinion to look through these false websites since people will go through great deals of trouble to make you believe what they have written is true in order to hurt someone else, or even to just make a joke. I don’t think we should be as open as we are to just open up Google and use the sites that pop up. We should be smart about it and go to sites we know are trustworthy.