to be embarrassed for falling for this urban myth

[yesway]

I just forwarded an email and everyone who I sent it to spotted it as an urban myth straight away.

It's the one where baddies put a doll in a car seat by the side of the road covered with a blanket and you stop the car and get attacked.

It was coupled with the one where the baddies throw eggs at your windscreen which when you try and wipe it causes a 92.5% reduction in visibility (how could I not have seen the lie in that figure alone??) and then you stop and they attack you.

[ blush]

p.s. I'm hoping to find some hard evidence from some of you that this is in fact true

OK feeling very naive now. Who's to say that someone wouldn't do something like that? If these are urban myths is there a point to sending these emails?
I got one years ago about a serial rapist playing a recording of a baby crying outside women's houses and then attacking them when they went to check it out. Was that untrue too?

pmsl ITTT :o
It's just another form of trollery IMO.

My sister forwarded this to us last week.

My DH laughed his head off.. you see, my sister is an eeejit and actually believes all this crap

So no, YANBU at all, you should be very embarrassed.

It is. See here.

Criminals are quite capable of committing rapes and murdering people without the use of such elaborate and time consuming ploys.

LOL at Isthatthetime

I got this email from MIL, who is prone to sending this sort of stuff around. She also reads the Daily Mail, so likes being needlessly frightened

So I just sent her the link to the Snopes de-bunk and told her she didn't have to worry. She hasn't said anything yet, but hopefully didn't keep sending it on...

With reference to the needle thing, I do actually know two people who pricked themselves on a discarded needle. One in a club toilets, the other was paying footie in a field. In both incidences, they were fine, a bit freaked out and had to have various tests, but was just a nasty accident by idiots leaving needles lying about. However, in the stories I've heard that get circulated via email, its missing the vindictive nature, and the little tiny sign attached to the needle saying "ha, you're now infected".

Also - back to the children snatching thing, I do remember last year that the schools near me issued a letter because somebody was trying to grab children, it made the headlines and was on all the local news. Nothing came of it, but it was pretty shocking. When I was younger, there was an announcement in the school about not getting into strangers cars as somebody was trying to "grab a child". The man was driving a red skoda. Which, when all the children went back to tell their parents the news from the school assembly, were met by lots of laughter and gawffs of "well, they wont get far in their skoda, will they?!".

If a serial rapist was playing recordings of babies crying, you'd be reading about it in the Times, rather than in a chain email.

Perardua. stupid sister also DM reader. Nuff said.

getabloodygrip. Ah.

These myths play on our deepest fears - the unknown assailant abusing out natural human instincts of trust and kindness in order to harm us. They sow alarm, despondency and mistrust. You have to wonder about the IQ/motives about the people who start them.

olderandwider, I probably wasn't very clear. Yes, the cloning of cards does happen and there have been incidences of it happening in petrol stations as part of very organised scams. The chain email I saw was specifically about Polish people working in the same petrol station attached to the supermarket where their villainous contemporaries were abducting children (all in the same email, they were some kind of child stealing, identity thieving, Sainsbury's based crime ring apparently) and it wasn't just your card details that they had, in fact financial gain wasn't the goal. One swipe of your card and they immediately had your name, address, children's school details (to aid their colleagues in half inching your children you see), inside leg measurement etc.

That's the point though isn't it? It's all based in truth. Children do get abducted, card details do get nicked. It's quite disgusting that it's always an anti-Eastern European or anti-traveller sentiment that it preys upon.

IheartRPatz are you in yorkshire? We had letters from local schools about the man in the red skoda too.

I agree olderandwider. It isn't impossible that criminals could use these tactics though, although I admit it's unlikely.

I find it worrying that none of these ethnic-specific, child-stealing, identity-thieving haridressers have any sort of brand loyalty. Asda, Sainsbury, Tesco, it's all fair game to them.
The major supermarkets really need to address their advertising policies....

well we certainly haven't had any rumours of them in our local Waitrose, at least SOME things remain sacred

Do Waitrose have toilets for hair-dyeing activities? Our local Waitrose doesn't. Although I suppose they could use the lift.

Our Waitrose has no toilets on site. Only a café. Difficult to disguise a child's gender with an organic flapjack and fairtrade earl grey.

Icontrol.. Oh I see, several myths blended into one giant epic myth about innocent babes being wrested from their parents by evil foreigners whilst their bank accounts are emptied (and sugar put into their petrol tanks, no doubt).

The best myth I was sent concerned a warning about a London gang initiation rite. Something like, if someone flashes their headlights at you in your car at night, don't flash back. You will be shot by the new recruit who has to prove his loyalty and fearlessness to his crew by executing the first driver to flash.

Complete bollocks.

Everyone at work fell for this, mainly because it came from a clerk within the local magistrates court! The next day it was put on the 'daily bulletin' by on of the managers! As soon as I read the 'police department' bit of the email I knew it was a load of bollocks (still forwarded to DH just in case though )

olderandwider - that story has obviously been adapted by someone who saw the same program I did about new York gangs where a gang member told that story about initiation.

In fact it was actually that the gang drove around with their headlights off and the first car to flash to tell them was targetted.

The card cloning thing happened to my friends at a Chinese restaurant where we celebrated a friend's 30th birthday. We paid cash, but those who paid by cards had them cloned. It was rumbled pretty quickly as we dined on Saturday and the following tuesday 2 of them had received calls from their credit card company querying their use in Singapore.

My dad told me the baby in the car seat story last week.. I listened intently and nodded then when he said they rape and murder you I said "thank goodness for that I thought they wanted to take the dog". :o

can I just share a hoax with you all - two lads were travelling in south america and there familes were scammed trying to get money out of them for the realise of the two lads in jail - the scam were sending emaisl which appeared to be fromt he lads

in an internet cafe they had been watched and then the pages looked and emaisl taken - they knew the lads wer eoging into a remote location for aroudn 10 days and took on the persona of the two lads and emailed the fmailies

here

if your teens go off travelling =tell them to put a code word = an agreed code word if they email and are in trouble

that way if the scam is tried you would knwo it was a scam as the code word was missing

I overheard a couple of mothers at school discussing the carseat one. Apparently it really did happen in my local town .
I laughed and suggested they checked snopes, as this is an old one, but unfotunately, it backfired and I was accused of not caring about the safety of possible victims, and I think I came across as being a bit of a tit!

Unfortunately card cloning is not an urban myth - it doesn't have anything to do with vulnerable lone women, driving late at night, mad axe murderers or child abduction, so it can't be .