This has circulated before, but I'm so sick of clicking fifteen forwarded messages to get to the meat of the email...also weeding through pages and pages of addresses. To be honest, I've utilized them a few times for promotional purposes. *lol* Why not...you send me a bunch of email addys and I'm gonna use them. But now, I think I'm going to be a lot more careful about what I add my name to, and I'll be using the bcc: more to protect my friends.
Here is something everyone should read and take the advice. If you don't, you're hurting yourself and your E-mail buddies...
By now, I suspect everyone is familiar with www.snopes.com and/or www.truthorfiction.com for determining whether information received via e-mail is just that: true/false or fact/fiction. Both are excellent sites.
Advice from Snopes.com Very important!
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-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-Mail addresses to use in SPAM E-Mails, or sell to other spammers. Even when you get E-Mails that demand you send the e-mail on if you're not ashamed of God/Jesus .....that's E-mail tracking and they're playing on your conscience. These people don't care how they get your e-mail 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, 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!...or make you feel guilty if you don't!...it's all about getting e-mail 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 stop making it easy for them!
Also: E-mail petitions are NOT acceptable to Government, 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:
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/petition/internet.asp
IMPORTANT!! HOW TO FORWARD E-MAIL APPROPRIATELY
A friend who is a computer expert received the following directly from a system administrator for a corporate system..
It is an excellent message that ABSOLUTELY applies to ALL of us who send E-Mails.
Please read the short letter below, even if you're sure you already follow proper procedures.
Do you really know how to forward E-Mails? 50% do; 50% DO NOT.
Do you wonder why you get viruses or junk mail? Do you hate it?
Every time you forward an E-mail there is information left over from the people who got the message before you, namely their e-mail addresses & names. As the messages get forwarded along, the list of addresses builds, and builds, and builds, and all it takes is for some poor sap to get a virus, and his or her computer can send that virus to every E-mail address that has come across his computer.
Or, someone can take all of those addresses and sell them or send junk mail to them in the hopes that you will go to the site and he will make five cents for each hit. That's right, all of that inconvenience over five cents
How do you stop it?
Well, there are several easy steps:
(1) When you forward an e-mail, DELETE all of the other addresses that appear in the body of the message (at the top).. That's right, DELETE them. Highlight them and delete them, backspace them, cut them, whatever it is you know how to do. It only takes a second. You MUST click the 'Forward' button first and then you will have full editing capabilities against the body and headers of the message. If you don't click on 'Forward' first, you won't be able to edit the message at all.
(2) Whenever you send an e-mail to more than one person, do NOT use the To: or Cc: fields for adding e-mail addresses. Always use the BCC: (blind carbon copy)field for listing the e-mail addresses. This is the way the people you send to will only see their own e-mail address. If you don't see your BCC: option click on where it says To: and your address list will appear. Highlight the address and choose BCC: and that's it, it's that easy. When you send to BCC: your message will automatically say 'Undisclosed Recipients' in the 'TO:' field of the people who receive it.
(3) Remove any 'FW :' in the subject line. You can re-name the subject if you wish or even fix spelling.
(4) ALWAYS hit your Forward button from the actual E-mail you are reading. Ever get those E-Mails that you have to open 10 pages to read the one page with the information on it? By Forwarding from the actual page you wish someone to view, you stop them from having to open many E-Mails just to see what you sent.
(5) Have you ever got an E-mail that is a petition? It states a position and asks you to add your name and address and to forward it to 10 or 15 people or your entire address book. The E-mail can be forwarded on and on and can collect thousands of names and e-mail addresses. A FACT: The completed petition is actually worth a couple of bucks to a professional spammer because of the wealth of valid names and e-mail addresses contained therein. If you want to support the petition, send it as your own personal letter to the intended recipient. Your position may carry more weight as a personal letter than a laundry list of names and e-mail address on a petition. (Actually, if you think about it, who's supposed to send the petition in to whatever cause it supports? And don't believe the ones that say that the e-mail is being traced, it just ain't so!)
(6) One of the main ones I hate is the ones that say something like, 'Send this e-mail to 10 people and you'll see something great run across your screen.' Or, sometimes they'll just tease you by saying something really cute will happen. IT AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN!!!!! (Trust me, I'm still seeing some of the same ones that I waited on 10 years ago!) I don't let the bad luck ones scare me either, they get trashed.
(7) Before you forward an Amber Alert, or a Virus Alert, or some of the other ones floating around nowadays,check them out before you forward them. Most of them are junk mail that's been circling the net for YEARS! Just about everything you receive in an E-mail that is in question can be checked out at Snopes. Just go to http://www.snopes.com/
Its really easy to find out if it's real or not. If it's not, please don't pass it on.
So please, in the future, let's stop the junk mail and the viruses.
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