 [pick-up from newsletter] è | Bill Gates will pay my favorite charity $1 for every email sent!
Yeah, right... If you're using email with any regularity, you're sure to get more than a few messages forwarded from well-meaning friends who are genuinely convinced that if you forward it yourself to your entire address book, it will deliver great wealth to you and them or that Bill Gates and his wife will donate a million dollars to some worthy cause. While the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is indeed the world's largest philanthropic institution, I assure you... they don't operate like that. Another popular one is the case of Amy Jones who is "7 years old, has severe lung cancer and a brain tumor due to beatings [sic]". For every email forwarded, the Make a Wish Foundation will donate 7 cents towards her medical bills. Very compelling, but (a) the Foundation has no way to track your email and (b) they don't support their causes in that way. In other words, if you forward that email you've been duped. Your friend has been duped as well and spammers all other world will rejoice. These forwarded hoaxes are actually like a gold mine for spammers. Confirmed email addresses from actual human beings. The Holy Grail of Spamming. So how do you tell if the forwarded email you just received is real or a hoax?
There are several sites dedicated to helping you with that. The one I use mostly is snopes.com. Just type in the subject of the email on their home page and chances are very good they have information about it. They'll tell you if it's False, True or Partly True. Even the history and origins of the hoax are revealed. Quite entertaining and educational at times. Another good site is truthorfiction.com plus there are plenty of others. (see end of article for links)  Some people forward these messages and other types of urban legends because they think there's no harm spreading it. Actually, there is great risk.
As I said above, by forwarding these chain hoaxes, you literally give away your email address plus those of your friends, and spammers can easily collect a large collection of addresses when they receive such messages. If you forward them, don't complain when you receive thirty Viagra and male enlargement advertisements everyday - you gave out your email address willingly in the first place.
If you are concerned, here are some tips you can try to avoid spammers from collecting your email addresses in the future. - Don't write your email addresses in public web pages e.g. forums, blogs, blog comments etc. Spammers run automated programs which trawl every single email address they could find in all web pages, so posting your email is like leaving your key under the mat.
- If you have to leave email addresses in a web page, try to think of ways to rewrite it. E.g. abc [at] gmail [dot] com / doremi under yahoo / santaclaus--hotmail.
- If you have friends who forward emails to you regularly, ask them to put your email address in the BCC column. That way your email address would not be shown to the others.
- Don't forward mass emails.
- If you receive unsolicited email messages which offer an option to "unsubscribe" from the list, don't be tempted to do so. Depending on the sender, very often the "unsubscribe" link is just a lure to actually confirm that your email address is valid. And if you "unsubscribe", you might actually get more spam in the future because they now know that your email address is a valid one.
- If some spam slips into your inbox, use the "mark as spam" option instead of deleting it. It helps the email service provider identify spam better for everyone.
Having said all this, I'm sure are certainly many legitimate pleas for help that do deserve our attention and our forwarding. However, when you DO forward an email that you've verified as being the Real McCoy, be a smart forwarder and do NOT use the TO: field to enter all those addresses. (remember, spammers love that!). Instead, put your own name in the TO: field, and enter all your friends' addresses in the BCC (which stands for Blind Carbon Copy). That way no one recipient knows who else the email went out to and if a recipient decides to forward the message in turn but is not as smart as you now are... s/he won't add to the spamming problem! Try your best to protect your email addresses. In this day and age, your email address is as private as your mobile number, street address, or your age - you don't want to give it to strangers and thieves.
Useful links
snopes.com
truthorfiction.com
http://urbanlegends.about.com
http://urbanlegendsonline.com/
http://www.scambusters.org/legends.html |
