Forward and Backward!!

Article for Non-techies and n00bs.

I hate forwarded messages. Its sick how everyone just keeps forwarding email messages and think that is the way to keep in contact. It’s so impersonal ….. and ….. very dangerous to your mailbox.

You might have not realised it till now, forwarded messages are one of the prime causes for spam. Each message has hundreds of potential email addresses which can be easily intercepted by a spammer. These email addresses are like gold to spammers as they are mostly addresses that are currently in use.

When I created my Gmail account, I never gave it out anywhere, be it a website, forum, mailing list, nothing. But slowly and surely, spam crept in. Why? Because some of my nitwit friends from college had the bright idea of sending me some stupid jokes or a sad message concerning a woman having cancer or something. :boxed:

Talking of sad people dying from cancer, have you ever found a letter of thanks from any of these people? I haven’t. But there are hundreds of these freaky messages floating around. And the worst part is, they compel you to forward it to some more people. :tdown:

Pass this message to 5 people for your wish to come true within a year
Pass it to 10 people for your wish to come true in 6 months
Pass it to 50 people for your wish to come true in 1 month
If you read the message but don’t pass it you will receive bad luck for 1 year

That kind of stuff really gets to me. I am forced to pass it on for fear of bad luck. Yes, I am weak in this matter I know, I can’t help it. (I have not put a filter to delete messages with Fwd: in the subject)

To avoid this whole thing, if you find something nice, just copy paste and send it along with your own personal touch. And if you are just too lazy to do that, at least change the subject of the email to something nicer than FWD: Something really nice…..