The AFU and Urban Legend Archive AFU Media afu guardian Select a topic - - - - - - - - Home Searches AFU FAQ - - - - - - - - AFU Animals Books Celebrities Classic Collegiate Death Disney Drugs Food GIF Language Legal Medical Misc Movies Politics Products Religion Science Sex Songs TV - - - - - - - - Other sites

In early 1989, Craig Shergold, a nine-year-old from south London, was diagnosed as having an apparently incurable brain tumour. He and his family decided to raise money for the local Royal Marsden hospital by trying to break the world record for the most get well cards received by one person. The record, an impressive one million cards, was broken on November 16, 1989.

Unfortunately that wasn't the end of the matter. The Guinness Book of Records lists Craig's total as 33,000,000 cards, but an unstoppable series of chain-letters, faxes and e-mail messages have kept cards arriving at a stupendous rate. The current estimated total is over a hundred million, even though the campaign officially ceased in 1991 and Craig's family have done everything in their power to end the appeal so that their son can return to a normal life and continue his remarkable recovery.

This example of the wildfire spread of misinformation has become a legend on the Internet. The Shergold card appeal - along with rumours that Ernie from Sesame Street will get leukaemia so children will learn to cope with bereavement, and that the Federal Communication Council plans to introduce a tax on high-speed modems - is one of the net's 'bad pennies'. When a long buried, out of date and categorically-false story resurfaces, net veterans can be heard to mutter a resigned 'Uh-oh, I think we have another Shergold here.' Can anything be done to make on-line information more reliable without forgoing the net's traditional unfettered freedom of expression? Some optimists think so. Just as there are programmers who devote a great deal of effort to developing antidotes for conventional computer viruses (the viruses that infect programs and damage data), there is also a Usenet newsgroup that aims to put a check on information viruses - the stories of dubious veracity which propagate so freely on the net. It's called alt.folklore.urban, also known as AFU.

Although urban folklore was around long before the Infobahn, the on-line community is particularly at risk. Information exchange on the net is dangerously promiscuous in that it is easy to forward messages to multiple contacts by e-mail or via the newsgroups. Worse still, attempts to eradicate information viruses are rarely effective as the viruses can survive in a dormant state in the Net archives for years before being rediscovered, shorn of context, sources and dates, and starting a new outbreak of misinformation.

One characteristic that these viruses share with the biological kind is that they mutate, with new and virulent strains being passed back and forth across the Net in a kind of global Chinese Whispers. Not only does Craig's illness vary from source to source, but variants have appeared saying that Craig now wants to receive business cards or postcards. (He doesn't.) He also appears to get younger with the passing of time. Most of the messages currently circulating refer to him as a seven-year-old; in fact, he has just turned 15.

The alt.folklore.urban newsgroup's mission is to produce well-documented evaluations of tall tales. It is a good place to turn if you hear an unlikely story which you would like confirmed or refuted. However, it is worth checking the FAQ (the list of Frequently Asked Questions) first. This contains the results of the group's researches to date - and, incidentally, informs us that June 24, Craig Shergold's birthday, has been declared AFU Day.

AFU's work is laudable, but as more and more conventional publications appear in on-line form, we need a systematic approach to the validation of the digital word. Anyone who has used a 'hypertext' system such as the World Wide Web will realise that digital publication can, potentially, eradicate a large amount of misinformation. No longer need quotes from hard-to-find sources be taken on trust. Point and click on the quoted text and a 'hypertext' link will bring up the original document. But how can we be sure that the source documents haven't been tampered with? The answer is digital authentication, which uses encryption algorithms to add an electronic signature to a document. This signature provides a reliable check that the document has not been altered, and also confirms the identity of the sender.

Vulnerability to forgery has until now been a serious flaw in the Internet e-mail system. For example, recent participants in the alt.hackers newsgroup have included god@heaven.com, stpete@pearlygates.com and oldnick@hades.com, not to mention clinton@whitehouse.gov. In the future, each participant on the Internet will become their own editor, and will be able to believe whichever individuals and organisations they choose.

The future of the Internet as an on-line gossip mongering coffee-house is assured, but if you want authenticated facts, these will be available too. This is good news for everyone - especially the Shergolds.

The alt.folklore.urban FAQ is available by FTP from rtfm.mit.edu.

World Wide Web users can find out about digital authentication from www.rsa.com The alt.folklore.urban FAQ is available by ftp from: ftp: /rtfm.mit.edu/pub/ usenet-by-group/alt.folklore.urban World Wide Web users can find out about digital authentication from http: /www.rsa.com/ Matthew Cockerill can be e-mailed as: m -cockerill@icrf.icnet.uk