Advice from Snopes
If any of you are wondering why I didn't return something to you that said something like "if I don't get this back I'll"....or, "See how many flowers you can get back," or "Forward this to 10 people in the next 5 mins. Or something bad will happen to you," etc. The following is why .. don't send them back:
Advice from Snopes.com < http://snopes. com/ >

1) Any time you see an E-Mail that says forward this on to "10" of your friends, or sign this petition, or you'll get bad luck, good luck, 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) Al most 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.

You can do your friends and family members a GREAT favor (PLEASE) by sending this information to them; you will be providing a service to your friends, and will be rewarded by not getting thousands of spam E-Mails in the future!

If you have been sending out (FORWARDING) the above kinds of E-Mail, now you know why you get so much SPAM!

Do yourself a favor and STOP adding your name(s) to those types of listings regardless how inviting they might sound! You may think you are supporting a GREAT cause, but you are NOT in the long run. Instead, you will be getting tons of junk mail later! Plus, we are helping the spammers get rich! Let's don't make it easy for them!

Al so: E-Mail petitions are NOT acceptable to Congress or any other organization. To be acceptable, petitions must have a signed signature and full address of the person signing the petition.

FINAL TIP: DELETE ALL EMAILS ADDRESSES WHEN FWDG & SEND BCC ONLY, THIS ALSO ELIMINATES SPAM.

I appreciate it greatly when I am sent email and the sender uses the BCC... I try to remember to delete other's addresses when I forward and email too. Too often I have seen my address on an email that has been forwarded around many times.

Excellent advice! :-)

The other thing to remember is: Google IS your friend. If you get an email that asks for donations or forwarding or something, it usually takes less than a minute to google and find information on it. Especially if it's a scam.

I HATE emails like that! I get emails all the time with 20 to 50 email addresses on them.

Good advice, did it come in an email?

PMSL


On a sadder note... I have an acquaintance who got sucked into a russian bride scam. He was so certain this amazing looking woman was totally in love with him, he was sending her money. He sent me one of her emails by mistake, and it took me less than five minutes on google to find several websites set up by men she had conned. They had the same pictures she'd sent, her details, names, everything. It was horrible.

I hate being suspicious, but you have to be so careful these days.

on all the emails that I get I am sceptical, unless requested none of the companies use email to notify you, and they never ask for money or passwords or any of that and if they do immediately delete them, I don't read anything that I don't know the sender. And even then, if somehow they have their email hacked into others can send stuff with their names on it, but it usually doesn't sound like then, the greeting will be different. You should know your friends styles and watch for anything that doesn't quiet seem right.

All good advice. I used to be our town's clerk-treasurer. About five years ago, I received a request from our village solicitor for what I suspected was a scam. I checked it out on Snopes and sure enough, it wasn't legitimate. I called him right away. He was SO embarrassed, especially since he'd already sent about 20 requests out, most of which were to other attorneys, including the county prosecutor. I felt bad for him. I don't remember which one it was, but jeez, wouldn't you think an attorney would have checked it out? I know he was trying to do something good, but still! :roll:

Folks believe what they want to believe. I keep an ad and tracking cookie blocking program running, and every day there are more. Half of the job ads I respond to are just data mining. As long as these companies get live e-mail addresses, they don't care how many lies they tell or scams they pull to get your info.

I got an email from my brother recently, just telling me he had bought this cool new MP3 and the website he bought it from. But it didn't seem like it was from him, when I asked him if he had sent it he said someone had hacked into his Hotmail account and was using it to send emails. you just can't be too careful these days can you.