Jan 25, 2009

Before you forward that email ...

If you're ever wondering why people like me don't return emails that say something like "Forward this important message ..." or "See how many hearts you can get back", or "Forward this to 10 people in the next 5 minutes and your wish will come true",

Here is why:

1) Any time you see an e-mail that says forward this on to '10' of your friends, or sign this petition, or help find a missing child, or whatever, it almost always has an e-mail tracker program attached that tracks the cookies and e-mails of those folks you forward to. The host sender is getting a copy each time it gets forwarded and then is able to get lists of 'active' e-mails to use in SPAM e-mails, or sell to other spammers.
2) Almost all e-mails that ask you to add your name and forward on to others are similar to that mass letter years ago that asked people to send business cards to the little kid in Florida who wanted to break the Guinness Book of Records for the most cards. All it was, and all any of this type of e-mail is, is a way to get names and 'cookie ' tracking information for telemarketers and spammers - - to validate active e-mail accounts for their own profitable purposes.
E-mail petitions are NOT acceptable to Congress or any other organization. Valid petitions must have a signed signature and full address of each person signing. You can do your friends, family and yourself a GREAT favor and stop forwarding these types of e-mails. STOP adding your name(s) to those types of listings regardless how inviting they might sound! You may think you are supporting a good cause, but you are NOT. Instead, you will be getting loads of junk mail helping spammers get rich.

If you get a funny story or something that you just HAVE to pass on to your e-mail list, then at least copy and paste the story into a new e-mail and don't just forward it.

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/inboxer.asp
Help stop the spam! [where: 75230]

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