The INTERVENTION
It has to stop, Please make it stop! It starts with you, today. Please do not forward me email messages that you find inspiring/alarming/interesting/cute etc. Its time to explain a few thing for the sake of the world.
1. It's probably fake: Most email forwards that you see are after a web search they are a hoax. No Bill Gate's wont send you 450 dollars or 12 CD's for free. Use snopes (an Urban legend website) to verify this, just type your favorite forwarded email in and wham bam scam, sorry I know it sounded to good to be..... oh you know.
Video animation of the kind of offers you see.
2. By forwarding email to a group of friends and family you unknowingly send their private emails out to the world. it then can and will, get picked up by some unscrupulous individual who will then sign us up to some wonderful spam list. That we will NEVER EVER NO NOT EVER get off of.
Here is a website that highlights this risk
Yes it is true you help these people by not stopping the forward cycle.This method means the spammer uses a hoax to convince people into giving him valid E-mail addresses.
A good example is Richard Douche's "Free CD's" chain letter. The letter promises a free CD for every person to whom the letter is forwarded to as long as it is CC'ed to Richard.
Richard claimed to be associated with Amazon and Music blvd, among other companies, who authorized him to make this offer. Yet he supplied no references to web pages and used a free E-mail address.
All Richard wanted was to get people to send him valid E-mail addresses in order to build a list of addresses to spam and/or sell.
3. Time = money or energy or fun, and by forwarding these type of emails you will expend all 3 of these things from mine and the lives of others. some people use email for work related purposes and getting forwards like this is very troublesome.
4. the last thing you need to know, it is very hard for us (the forwarded to person to tell you this, we appreciate your friendship/family ties, and would hate to see your messages automaticly filtered into our junk mail box (we turn this on for your email address) because you send stuff like this.
