tomhudson's Journal: Tired of "forward this email to 5 friends for good luck" ?

Every once in a while, somone (usually a relative, sometimes a friend) sends me "one of those" emails. "Please help me get good luck by sending it to 5 friends." or "Its important." or "Help this cause by ..."

Of course, when I point out that its all a scam, "How do you KNOW that THIS TIME it's not real?" Showing them snopes, or archives of the same old email scam dated from the prevous century, fail to make much of an impression ...

Here's something a friend sent me that I'm going to pass on to them : http://info.org.il/irrelevant/may02-smilepop-soapbox4.swf.

Better approach

[plover]

You're going about it the wrong way. Don't just call them on sending you a misquoted MARS WILL BE AS BIG AS THE MOON [snopes.com] letter. They'll consider that a one-time mistake, even though they'll still forward it on again next year.

Instead, you've got to appeal to their selfish side. Inform them that spammers get email addresses by reading them from the chain letters that are sent around the internet. While not 100% factual it's mostly true; more often than not chain letters get posted on usenet, at which poin

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[RM6f9]

Or better yet, be the one doing the harvesting, and send them all an innocent reply - with the sig doing the not-so-hidden work!

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[Timex]

Or better yet, be the one doing the harvesting...

I've actually done this a few times.

I get annoyed at these sorts of messages, true. I'm also annoyed at the fact that the monkeys that forward these things along can't be bothered to learn how to "clean up the message" before sending it out.

On at least three occasions that come to mind, I've weeded through the headers that were carelessly left in the message and replied to them all in bulk. In my reply, I told them who I was and how I got their address. I cautioned them to be cautious of any warning tha

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[RM6f9]

I dunno about "use them", I do know that despite repeated evidence suggesting the habit is dangerous, some people will click every link in any piece of mail they get. I swear I will never understand human behavior - even being one doesn't seem to help.

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[tomhudson]

I've done that - it creates a certain amount of "ill will", so I won't be doing it again if it was forwarded by a friend or family.

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[Timex]

I've done that - it creates a certain amount of "ill will", so I won't be doing it again if it was forwarded by a friend or family.

The first time I did that, I might have been too harsh in my phrasing. The next time I did it, I didn't get a backlash (that is, my sister didn't come up to me later and say "Do you realize what you did? All my friends asked me who the hell you are and how you got their email address!")...

I simply (briefly) explained who I was, what my profession is, how I got their email address, and the virtues of cleaning junk headers out before forwarding email and what was wrong with the email they chose to forward

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[Shadow Wrought]

I had a friend who sent these all the times, "Just in case." Why an otherwise smart individual would fall for this... but I digress. I forwarded the email not 5 times, but 10 times. To her. Never got another one again;-)

My usual response is...

[FortKnox]

... Mom, quit sending this crap to me. In fact quit sending it altogether! Its a buncha bologna, and you know it. I've explained it many times.

99% of them, though, are about smiling or a prayer or something, so her response is usually that at least it got me to think and smile and feel better.
How am I supposed to scold her after that??

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[StalinsNotDead]

How am I supposed to scold her after that??

Harshly;)

ah, chains

[jci]

My mom forwards me the chain letters about the collapse of the internets and stuff.

What was more interesting though was a work faux pas (?). Someone CC'd an innocuous email to an exchange member list that was roughly 1/2 of the nationwide megacorp. One easy sounding group name and one person had e-mailed thousands.

There were the hundreds of e-mails of "take me off this list!" and then the super ironic "don't reply to all you idiots," sent of course via reply to all. IT had to block that whole stream. I

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[plover]

There were the hundreds of e-mails of "take me off this list!"

"Me, too!"

From time to time we've had the same thing circulate around our very very big shop, too. Usually it manifests itself as a slowdown in Exchange, followed by an early lunch for most of us, followed by the sound of heads rolling. Hilarity ensues (unless you're on the Exchange team.)

But the absolute best was a personal vacation notice where the employee went into the address book and just clicked OK, which selected the top address l