Why online people lie to you

They have done this since the beginning. This is not something new. The nature of the internet makes it easy for others to lie to you. They can tell you anything and you can not proove them wrong.

Except when they are too stupid…

In times where everybody can participate and publish free information on the web, everybody got a voice that can be heard. This makes people often go strange ways. Lying is not something special to human because it is well known in real life.

If you got a good human knowledge and knows the tricks that can be played, you can easily read through the lines of what they tell you.

But on the web, everything is different:

A dog can tell you that he is a cat and you can not proove him wrong.

This can be confusing, especially when you are new to the web. When you look at the different levels of communication within the web, you’ll notice that everybody tries to get as most advantage as possible out of this.
For example, it is hard for people to understand that the web allowes spoofing of email addresses.

I receive a lot of requests that my company or a person within that company spreads email worms.

When analyzing the mail header, I can prove them wrong. But do they belive me? It is often easier to belive what is obviously showed to them: The sender’s address.

Sometimes I like to discuss. When talking to online people, I often hear them talking about that product X is safer to use than for example, product Y.
I then ask them why they belive in product X – and guess what, they are not able to give me valuable arguments for using X instead of Y.

They belive in product X because others do.

This does not mean that their belive is a failure, it means that they have failed to inform themselves.

Often it is easier to live with a lie instead of knowing the truth…