Ten Email Facts of Life
Last
Update: 5/1/2006
- How to spot a phish.
- For a list of spammer promoted stock investments visit
stocks from hell
or
Spam-contaminated Stocks. See also:
Paul
Wouters spam page.
- You will not receive a
lump of coal
this Christmas; there is no "Good Times" virus.
Never forward email containing a virus warning unless you first confirm the
validity of the warning at a legitimate web site.
Big companies don't do business via chain letter. Bill Gates is not giving you $1000;
Outback
is not giving away gift certificates, Disney is not giving you a
free vacation; there is no baby food company issuing class-action checks. Just because someone says
(four generations back), "we checked it out and it's legit",
does not make it true. And lastly, there is no need to pass it on
"just in case it's true."
There is no kidney theft ring in New Orleans. No one is waking up in a bathtub full of ice, even if a friend of a
friend swears it happened to their cousin.
If you are determined to believe the kidney-theft ring stories,
please note: The National Kidney Foundation
has repeatedly issued requests for actual victims of organ thieves to come forward and tell their stories. None have. That's
"none" as in "zero;" not even your friend's cousin.
Neiman Marcus doesn't sell a $200 cookie recipe. But, even if they did, we have all seen it.
You can't get a copy
here because you might not be able to resist
the urge to pass on the discredited
story to everyone you know.
We all know all 500 ways to drive your roommates crazy, irritate co-workers gross out bathroom stall neighbors and
creep out people on an elevator. We also know exactly how
many engineers, college students, Usenet posters and people
from each and every world ethnicity it takes to change a light bulb.
Even if the latest NASA rocket disaster(s) DID contain plutonium that went to particulate over the eastern seaboard, do you REALLY think this information would reach the public via an AOL chain-letter?
If your CC: list is regularly longer than the actual content of your< message, you're probably going to...
If you're using Outlook, IE, Netscape or any email client that uses "HTML encoding," turn it off before sending it to someone on a Unix shell account. They can't read it, and probably don't care enough to save the attachment and then view it with a web browser, since they think you're probably just forwarding them a copy of a cookie
recipe.
If you still absolutely MUST forward that 10th-generation message from a friend, at least have the decency to trim the eight miles of
headers showing everyone else who's received it over the last 6 months.
It sure wouldn't hurt to get rid of all the ">" that begins each line. Besides, if it has gone around that many times--they've probably already seen it.
Antiperspirants do not cause breast cancer. Craig Shergold in England is not dying of cancer or anything else at this time and would like everyone to stop sending him their business cards. He apparently is also no longer a "little boy" either.
The above was adapted from an email forward to me by my daughter
,
12/4/99, who received it from Spestump@aol.com
on 12/2/99. It is attributed to the Drake and Zeke
show.
I have recently warned me about the following
hoaxes, please don't perpetuate the myths:
Virtual
Card for You, Celcom/Sandman/"Win
A Holiday", JOIN
THE CREW, PENPALS, Antiperspirants
and breast cancer, Wobbler
From: Tiffinany Nairne
Date sent: Tue, 14 Mar 2000
I know this guy whose neighbor, a young man, was home recovering from
having
been served a rat in his bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. So
anyway, one day he went to sleep and when he awoke he was in his bathtub
and it was full of ice and he was sore all over. When he got out
of the tub he realized that HIS KIDNEYS HAD BEEN STOLEN and he saw a note on his
mirror that said "Call 911!" But he
was afraid to use his phone because it was connected to his computer, and there
was a virus on his computer that would destroy his hard
drive if he opened an email entitled "Join the crew!"
He knew it wasn't a hoax because he himself was a computer programmer
who
was working on software to save us from Armageddon when the year 2000
rolls around. And it's a little known fact that the Y1K problem caused
the Dark Ages. His program will prevent a global disaster in which
all the computers get together and distribute the $250.00 Neiman-Marcus
cookie recipe under the leadership of Bill Gates. (It's true,
I read it all last week in a mass email from BILL GATES HIMSELF, who
was also promising me a free Disney World vacation and $5,000 if I would
forward the email to everyone I know.)
The poor man then tried to call 911 from a pay phone to report his
missing
kidneys, but reaching into the coin return slot he got jabbed with
an HIV-infected needle around which was wrapped a note that said, "Welcome
to the world of AIDS." Luckily he was
only a few blocks from the hospital, the one where that little
boy who is dying of cancer is, the one whose last wish is for everyone
in the world to send him an email and the American Cancer Society
has agreed to pay him a nickel for every email he receives.
I sent him two
emails and one of them was a bunch of x' and o's in the shape
of an angel (if you get it and forward it to more than 10 people,
you will have good luck but to only 10 people you will only have
OK luck, and if you send it to less than 10 people you will have BAD
LUCK FOR SEVEN YEARS). So anyway the poor guy
tried to drive himself to the hospital, but on the
way he noticed another car driving along without its lights on. To be
helpful, he flashed his lights at him and was promptly shot as part of
a gang initiation.
Send THIS to all your friends and you will receive 4 green M&Ms; but
if you don't, the owner of Proctor and Gamble will
report you to his Satanist friends and you
will have more bad luck, and the U.S. government
will put a tax on your emails forever.
