Forwarded email warning
balaji TN
Forwarded email warning
This was written as an email. Please feel free to copy the text below this paragraph, paste and send to anyone you wish.
Forward this as widely as possible. Please read to the end for my secret weapon for dealing with this.
Do you receive a lot of forwarded emails containing warnings, free offers, or heart rending stories from well meaning friends? By receiving and forwarding these you are attracting spam to your mailbox. Why? The more your email address is distributed, the more spammers will be able to pick it up (e.g., from a virus infected computer) and a forwarded email may reach huge numbers of people.
Always BCC emails, and ask everyone who emails you to do the same.
I get EXTREMELY irritated by apparently intelligent people (such as my family) being taken in by hoax forwarded emails. Look people, they are ALL fakes. I know only two people who have EVER sent me true forwarded emails, and both those are somewhat different.
If a friend tells you they know something you will probably believe them. If a friend tells you that they know something because their friend’s brother-in-law’s colleague heard someone say it in a pub, you will probably not believe them. Emails that have been forwarded several time could come from your friend’s friend’s friend’s ……. colleague’s…. - from any of a huge group of people you do not know, that is bound to contain some hoaxers or idiots.
What is different about the two people who forward me true emails is that they usually know the originator of the email. I think they are often originators of the emails they want to be forwarded.
Suppose you are unsure about an email how do you check it? Firstly does it cite a source? An email can link to a website. If a warning has been issued by a government agency or a big corporation you can be sure that there will be a press release on their website, that will probably be carried on the news wire web sites as well. Why does the email you received not link to it? They never do link, do they?
I am not a representative of any organisation, but I can still link to my bloghttp://pietersz.co.uk/2010/09/forwarded-email-warning where you can read this. You can Google for my name (”Graeme Pietersz”) and find out enough about me to decide whether you want to trust me or not.
So now that you know who I am, what do I want to tell you? I can best explain by briefly dissecting some of the emails that have most annoyed me recently .
The first was a warning that people were leaving aids infected hypodermics embedded in cinema seats in Sri Lanka. It claimed to have been issued by a Sri Lankan government agency called the National Insitutes of Health. There is a government agency of that name in the US, not in Sri Lanka. So we have a warning issued by a non existent body. This made it obvious that it was a fake, but I still looked it up on http://snopes.com and found it was an old hoax, that had been repeatedly edited for different countries.
The other was a repeat of the claim that using a mobile phone at a petrol station could cause a fire. Of course this is widely believed even without email. As usual, the email started with a claim that some credible source had warned of the danger. In this case it was Shell. Shell has denied issuing the warning. In fact, Shell are so confident of the safety of cell phone signals that they place cells phone MASTS (far stronger signals than phones) on petrol station forecourts ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2309645.stm ). See, I told you people telling you the truth will cite credible sources — and the BBC just about counts as one.
If you do a bit more research (why trust me? Do your own searching, there are plenty of credible sources on the web) you will find that there has never been a single confirmed incident of this happening. The media has sometimes reported fires or explosions that were initially thought may have been caused by mobile phones, but further investigation has ALWAYS shown something else to be responsible.
The main risk factors are:
1) certain materials used in cars and clothing,
2) women, and possibly,
3) self service pumps that keep running when when you hang them on your car and walk off.
The problem is static (hence “certain materials”). Women, while filling their tanks, tend to get in and out of cars more than men do. If the petrol keeps running then you can come back to it and discharge the static into something carrying a running, and evaporating, stream of petrol.
OK, if you are too lazy to do your own research, here are some links:http://www.snopes.com/autos/hazards/gasvapor.asp ,http://mythbustersresults.com/episode2 , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ0aTMMITp8
Of course people will tell you it might just happen. You might just get hit by a meteorite, but only a fool would change their behaviour because of the risk.
The worst type are probably the emails that claim you will be paid (or some good cause will be paid) if you forward a certain number of copies of an email. Firstly, how do they know if you forwarded it or not? There is no reliable way of tracking emails (you could embed something like an image that is loaded from a server, so that can be tracked, but could easily be lost if forwarded the wrong way). Some governments MIGHT have the ability to do track email forwards within their own country (and cooperating allies) by forcing every single service provider to analyse the text and report matches, but no business does.
Of course, these emails never link to the press release that always accompanies a big advertising push (giving money away) or corporate charity.
So what do you do about people who send you these? They are well meaning, so start by politely explaining to them that these stories are false, and how to check them. Forward this email to them.
If they still carry on and they do not bcc, then research the myth at Snopes and Google for key phrases from the email. One of the two will give you a nice debunking link. Click “reply to all”, add the debunking link to the top of the email and send it to everyone who got the original - after all, if they sent you the email addresses of all those other people, they want you to use them!
Follow up by forwarding to this email to everyone in that list.
You will not get any more inane forwarded email from them. Word it right and you may not get any more email from them at all.
Time is precious, STOP WASTING IT WITH THIS RUBBISH. Its just spam. However well meaning people are, the end result is the same as any spam: or worse because people believe it and end up even worse informed than they were before. If they believe enough of these they will end up worse informed than readers of the Daily Mail.