VENT: People who pass on chain and warning emails

biscit

How difficult is it: do not pass on chain emails.

My wife was in tears last night because a friend thoughlessly forwarded a petition about the killers of Jamie Bulger. Their crime was horrific, but some sick individual seems to feel there is insufficient hate out there and has embelished it with some evil fantasy details.

Yes it is better to be safe than sorry. Check out every warning before passing it on- never ever ever pass something on because just because you think the person who sent it you is reliable. If you are the sort of person who can't remember the names of the hoax checking sites and find checking things out confusing- the safe thing to do is to delete any email that says to pass it on to everyone.

If someone complains that you have sent you a hoax and you should have checked it out- they are behaving reasonably. Even if there is a hint of sarcasm to their response. Do not behave as if this person is being rude to you because they are not. You are being obnoxious rude for thinking they are being anything other than helpful and reasonable.

vikingaero

Passing on these emails is a good thing. It enables me to identify which ones of my friends, colleagues and contacts are complete muppets and to possibly avoid them in the future.

[Deleted User]

If 12 people don't comment on this post, the OP will face the wrath of the tree of temptation!

More seriously, i tend to give a 2-strike warning on those emails - if anyone sends me 1 after I've asked them not to, they are blocked from my email. But i'm a bloke, and most blokes don't bother with such tosh

voiceofreason

vikingaero wrote: »

Passing on these emails is a good thing. It enables me to identify which ones of my friends, colleagues and contacts are complete muppets and to possibly avoid them in the future.

Now I thought it was just me who did that!

biscit

ringo_24601 wrote: »

If 12 people don't comment on this post, the OP will face the wrath of the tree of temptation!

More seriously, i tend to give a 2-strike warning on those emails - if anyone sends me 1 after I've asked them not to, they are blocked from my email. But i'm a bloke, and most blokes don't bother with such tosh

I have few friends who are email only and none of them send this stuff.

CHR15

Please pass a link to this post to everyone in your address book.

Microsoft, the FBI, the National Security Authority and Almars Kebab Van have deemed this to be the important email to date.
Everyone who forwards it will receive $10000 from the Federal Bank of Botswana.

sassyblue

vikingaero wrote: »

Passing on these emails is a good thing. It enables me to identify which ones of my friends, colleagues and contacts are complete muppets and to possibly avoid them in the future.

haha l agree with you.

I get fed up with the warnings that women are being abducted by a transit van parking beside them and someone bundling them in the side door as they walk past (it possibly has happened but not on a daily basis), the ones that if you send onto 12 people within 3 minutes something will pop up on your screen, and the one where there;s a ghost in a car advert (or lately the Michael Jackson ghost in his house) then you watch and the girls face from The Exorcist the screams out at you, the one where you shouldn't open an email because your hard drive will be fried....

I could go on but you get the meaning, boring!!

Biscit, that's awful! People surprise me daily with how nasty they can be :mad:

Mankysteve

ringo_24601 wrote: »

More seriously, i tend to give a 2-strike warning on those emails - if anyone sends me 1 after I've asked them not to, they are blocked from my email. But i'm a bloke, and most blokes don't bother with such tosh

I think this may be my policy from now on. Chain mail messages are great way for spam people to collect active email address.

hoyles10

They irritate me as well so i'm going to try Ringo's 2 strike policy.

The ones that annoy me the most are the text message ones. I got on only this morning from a girl I know basically saying that if I don't forward the message to 20 people including the person who sent it me then I was going to die this week.

I've just sent her a message back asking her to stop sending messages like that, i'm not forwarding them and if I do die this week at least i'll die with a small phone bill

RadoJo

I have taught my Mum to send all her spammy type e-mails to me so I can verify the details before she sends them on to the rest of her friends and embarrasses herself! I think that people who forward on the warnings etc are probably trying to be helpful and a gentle pointing towards snopes or hoaxslayer should do the job. Anyone who sends on anything that I deem completely pointless or threatening gets a curt e-mail back to say that I'm not interested and the longer they carry on, the 'curter' the e-mails get until they are so peppered with expletives that there's not much else in there...;)

biscit

RadoJo wrote: »

I have taught my Mum to send all her spammy type e-mails to me so I can verify the details before she sends them on to the rest of her friends and embarrasses herself! I think that people who forward on the warnings etc are probably trying to be helpful and a gentle pointing towards snopes or hoaxslayer should do the job.

Thing is that some people (we had a thread like this before) treat a gentle pointing to those sites as if they've been slapped in the face.