By now, I suspect everyone is familiar with www.snopes.com and/or www.truthorfiction.com for determining whether information received via email is just that: true/false, or fact/fiction.
Both are excellent sites.
This advice from Snopes.Com
1) Any time you see an e-mail that says:
"forward this on to '10' (or however-many) of your friends",
"sign this petition, or you'll get bad luck, good luck",
"you'll see something funny on your screen after you send it", or whatever it almost ALWAYS has an e-mail tracker program attached that tracks the cookies and e-mail addresses 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-mail addresses to use in SPAM e-mails, or sell to other spammers.
Even when you get e-mails that demand you send the email on if you're not ashamed of God/Jesus .....that's e-mail tracking and they're playing on our conscience. These people don't care how they get your email addresses - just as long as they get them.
Also, e-mails that talk about a missing child or a child with an incurable disease - "how would you feel if that was your child"..... e-mail tracking!!! Ignore them and don't participate!
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.
You can do your friends and family members a GREAT favor 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, you now know why you get so much SPAM!
Do yourself a favor and STOP adding your name(s) to those types of listings regardless of how inviting they might sound or make you feel guilty if you don't!... it's all about getting email addresses - nothing more!
You may think you are supporting a GREAT cause, but you are NOT! Instead, you will be getting tons of junk mail later and very possibly a virus attached! Plus, you are helping the spammers get rich! Let's not make it easy for them!
Also:
E-mail petitions are NOT acceptable to White House, Congress or any other organization -i.e. Social Security, etc. To be acceptable, petitions must have a signed signature and full address of the person signing the petition, so this is a waste of time and you're just helping the e-mail trackers.
Please read the full story here.
Also:
when forwarding mail, delete the senders name and e-mail address before forwarding. You can do this after you click "forward," then just backspace the names and e-mail addresses of those who sent it to you off of the e-mail that you are forwarding.
And watch and learn from this fellah.
*Thanks, Karen
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