There’s an old saying credited to Edgar Allen Poe – “Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see.” This saying first appeared in his story, “The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether” in 1845. In 1858, the saying was altered to read: ” Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear.”

Today’s post is about applying the same reasoning that Poe and others used to today’s Internet life. Example: although it’s a bit small, take a look above at the screen capture of an email I received. In the subject line, it clearly says “NOT SPAM.” However, my warning to you today is that anyone can put that in the Subject line. What the sender is trying to do is make you think that your email’s spam filter looked at the email, decided it wasn’t spam (aka junk) and labeled it so you would know it is safe. Unfortunately, that is not necessarily true. Some email servers will label an email “Spam” or “Junk” by putting that ahead of the Subject but rarely do the servers mark an email as “NOT SPAM” or “NOT JUNK.”

Bottom line: don’t believe everything you read online, in particular what is in the Subject line of an email.