iPhone 5 Screw Rumor Goes Viral, Shows Gullibility of Tech Press
The hyper secret world of Apple Inc. inspires rumors, especially about new products, like the much anticipated iPhone 5.
The new phone is expected to be introduced in September.
So when the tech press started chewing over rumors of an unusual screw designed by Apple, few questioned it.
But it turned out to be a hoax. It included a fake photo attached to a bogus email.
The guy behind the rumor and the email was Lukasz Lindell, CEO of Day4, a Swedish digital communication company.
Anchor Marco Werman gets more details from Lindell, who says this isn’t surprising in the internet age, but what is really extraordinary is how little information can be provided to the story as a so-called primary source.
“You uploaded the image of the asymmetrical screw with this ambiguous sentence: ‘A friend took a photo a while ago at that fruit company, they are obviously even creating their own screws,'” Lindell says. “Pretty innocuous. But then it got exaggerated by all sorts of rubbish people made up.”
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