A Year Of Social Security Internet Hogwash, Debunked

As “Social Security And You” columnist Tom Margenau explains, internet rumors and lies about Social Security are commonplace, but 2011 takes the cake:

This year will go down in my books as the year of Internet hogwash — at least as far as Social Security is concerned. It seems that I spent half my columns in 2011 dispelling all the myths, rumors, half-truths and outright lies about Social Security that are being spread on the World Wide Web.

Actually, most of the gobbledygook is nothing new. Most of these stories have been around for years. It’s just that in the past, the lies were spread rather harmlessly between two coworkers sitting in their lunchroom or among a few neighbors chatting over the back yard fence.

But today they’re being spread to millions of people with the push of a button over the Web. And sadly, their very ubiquity lends them credence. If you see or read something often enough on the Internet, no matter how preposterous it might seem, you tend to think it might be true.