If you got an e-mail making one of these claims, would you think it was true or false?

• "If you forward this e-mail, you could win a trip to Disney World from Bill Gates!"
• "If you forward this e-mail, someone will donate lots of money to the American Cancer Society!"
• "Boycott Starbucks, because they refused to send free coffee to our soldiers in Iraq!"

All three e-mails are compelling, and designed to make you pass the e-mail along to all of your friends. Also, all three are FALSE. How do you tell? When in doubt, check the story on Snopes.com, the Urban Legends Reference Pages.

With e-mail, it's easy to share cute stories, outrageous political news and scary health warnings with your friends. But before you hit the "forward" button on your e-mail, check for the facts on Snopes.com. The staff of Snopes investigate many of the e-mail claims circulating on the internet, and they post the results on their web site.

If you're researching a specific claim, you can use their search engine to locate the report. There's also a browse feature. Each urban legend or e-mail claim is assigned to a category. Categories range from Autos to Weddings, including Legal, Medical, Computers (which includes discussions about virus warnings), Fauxtography (exposes faked photographs), and more.

Sometimes the stories are true, and you can forward the e-mail with confidence. But often, Snopes staff have debunked them, and they give you clear descriptions of how they found out that a tale was false.

So stop inbox clutter, and fight the chain mail--check before forwarding!