The Times: Tech column - PC Toseland's urban legend/Owning workers' thoughts
By David Rowan
POOR Paul Toseland - one minute he was just another Northamptonshire community police officer, the next, he was a notorious peddler of junk e-mail.
All PC Toseland wanted to do was warn local businesses of a new telephone scam that could potentially cost them "a lot of money". So in his capacity as Corby Business Anti-Crime Network Administrator, PC Toseland thoughtfully sent a few contacts an e-mail, and unwittingly propagated the summer's wildest urban legend.
Indispensable as e-mail has become in our daily communications, it has also proved the most effective medium for modern myths. For PC Toseland, the trouble began with the request that anyone reading his warning, about a woman pretending to be in distress so that she could call her own premium-rate phone line, should "please pass it on to friends and colleagues".
By this weekend, the e-mail had been received by thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people across Britain, to the growing embarrassment of Northamptonshire Police. For despite PC Toseland's claim that the scam in question had been reported "five times in the last couple of weeks", his superiors this week had to accept the uncomfortable truth. They said: "Information which is being circulated electronically to businesses by the force is not correct."
The e-mail, headed "Message from Northamptonshire Police", gives a warning of a woman who has been calling on homes claiming that her car has broken down and asking to call her husband. Her fictitious five-minute conversation costs the bill-payer £250. The warning is spoilt by only one detail: according to ICSTIS, the body that regulates premium-rate phone lines, the highest tariff charged in Britain is £1.50 a minute, rather than £50.
The regulator told local trading standards officers that no one had been able to produce a phone bill to support the story. But the damage was done. Rob Dwight, media officer for the regulator, said: "For the best part of three months, we've been getting dozens of calls a day about it. It's just not true. You simply can't set that tariff in this country."
Students of urban legends would have seen the warning signs: the lack of detail about the victims, little description for the woman, the combination of breathless anecdote and official police report.
Since e-mail replaced the chain letter as the preferred means of spreading popular myth, it has spread everything from false virus alerts to dubious promises of Nigerian riches. But when Northamptonshire Police began receiving inquiries on June 17, the force initially issued a statement insisting "to the best of our knowledge it is not an urban legend as some people have been suggesting".
Last week it had to accept the inevitable. A spokeswoman admitted that it was not true. "We do want this to go to bed now. Unfortunately the e-mail was sent out in good faith and the facts weren't checked out at the start."
PC Toseland was unavailable for comment. At least he was not first to tell the story: The Times has traced the myth back to early May, when it began circulating among local Neighbourhood Watch groups.
The National Neighbourhood Watch Association, to its credit, decided not to forward the warning. Martin Burrekoven-Kalve, the association's communications director, said: "You feel it in your waters that something's not right, and this seemed a bit far-fetched. It doesn't take an awful lot of research to find out it's not true." But in Northamptonshire, the local Chamber of Commerce did pass on the warning in its e-mail bulletin, in part encouraged by an employee's belief that she had almost fallen victim herself. The woman had apparently become suspicious after receiving a knock on her door at home to find a stranger asking to make an emergency call on a mobile phone. The householder refused, although when The Times attempted to contact the intended victim, she proved unavailable.
So did the Chamber of Commerce now believe that the scam PC Toseland had described was genuine? "It's difficult, isn't it?" a spokeswoman replied after a pause. "I just don't know."
++++
BE careful the next time you have a thought - your boss might own it. That's the conclusion of a five-year court battle between the telecoms firm Alcatel and Evan Brown, a former employee who had an idea for some software that would update old computer code. The idea remained in Brown's head and was not written down, but when he mentioned it at work, his boss demanded that he hand it over. He refused - claiming that he had been developing it since 1975, partly in his own time and was fired. Now a judge in Texas has decided that the company is entitled to the idea, as Brown's contract stated that it owned his "inventions", as well as $332,000 in costs. Brown insists that his brain has been stolen - so keep quiet the next time you're chatting with the boss.
(The Times, August 17 2002)
POOR Paul Toseland - one minute he was just another Northamptonshire community police officer, the next, he was a notorious peddler of junk e-mail.
All PC Toseland wanted to do was warn local businesses of a new telephone scam that could potentially cost them "a lot of money". So in his capacity as Corby Business Anti-Crime Network Administrator, PC Toseland thoughtfully sent a few contacts an e-mail, and unwittingly propagated the summer's wildest urban legend.
Indispensable as e-mail has become in our daily communications, it has also proved the most effective medium for modern myths. For PC Toseland, the trouble began with the request that anyone reading his warning, about a woman pretending to be in distress so that she could call her own premium-rate phone line, should "please pass it on to friends and colleagues".
By this weekend, the e-mail had been received by thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people across Britain, to the growing embarrassment of Northamptonshire Police. For despite PC Toseland's claim that the scam in question had been reported "five times in the last couple of weeks", his superiors this week had to accept the uncomfortable truth. They said: "Information which is being circulated electronically to businesses by the force is not correct."
The e-mail, headed "Message from Northamptonshire Police", gives a warning of a woman who has been calling on homes claiming that her car has broken down and asking to call her husband. Her fictitious five-minute conversation costs the bill-payer £250. The warning is spoilt by only one detail: according to ICSTIS, the body that regulates premium-rate phone lines, the highest tariff charged in Britain is £1.50 a minute, rather than £50.
The regulator told local trading standards officers that no one had been able to produce a phone bill to support the story. But the damage was done. Rob Dwight, media officer for the regulator, said: "For the best part of three months, we've been getting dozens of calls a day about it. It's just not true. You simply can't set that tariff in this country."
Students of urban legends would have seen the warning signs: the lack of detail about the victims, little description for the woman, the combination of breathless anecdote and official police report.
Since e-mail replaced the chain letter as the preferred means of spreading popular myth, it has spread everything from false virus alerts to dubious promises of Nigerian riches. But when Northamptonshire Police began receiving inquiries on June 17, the force initially issued a statement insisting "to the best of our knowledge it is not an urban legend as some people have been suggesting".
Last week it had to accept the inevitable. A spokeswoman admitted that it was not true. "We do want this to go to bed now. Unfortunately the e-mail was sent out in good faith and the facts weren't checked out at the start."
PC Toseland was unavailable for comment. At least he was not first to tell the story: The Times has traced the myth back to early May, when it began circulating among local Neighbourhood Watch groups.
The National Neighbourhood Watch Association, to its credit, decided not to forward the warning. Martin Burrekoven-Kalve, the association's communications director, said: "You feel it in your waters that something's not right, and this seemed a bit far-fetched. It doesn't take an awful lot of research to find out it's not true." But in Northamptonshire, the local Chamber of Commerce did pass on the warning in its e-mail bulletin, in part encouraged by an employee's belief that she had almost fallen victim herself. The woman had apparently become suspicious after receiving a knock on her door at home to find a stranger asking to make an emergency call on a mobile phone. The householder refused, although when The Times attempted to contact the intended victim, she proved unavailable.
So did the Chamber of Commerce now believe that the scam PC Toseland had described was genuine? "It's difficult, isn't it?" a spokeswoman replied after a pause. "I just don't know."
++++
BE careful the next time you have a thought - your boss might own it. That's the conclusion of a five-year court battle between the telecoms firm Alcatel and Evan Brown, a former employee who had an idea for some software that would update old computer code. The idea remained in Brown's head and was not written down, but when he mentioned it at work, his boss demanded that he hand it over. He refused - claiming that he had been developing it since 1975, partly in his own time and was fired. Now a judge in Texas has decided that the company is entitled to the idea, as Brown's contract stated that it owned his "inventions", as well as $332,000 in costs. Brown insists that his brain has been stolen - so keep quiet the next time you're chatting with the boss.
(The Times, August 17 2002)
posted by David Rowan at Saturday, August 17, 2002
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