Forwards Thinking

It is another work day morning, and I find myself scanning through a stream of unread emails. Scrolling through the list, I find the most tempting email waiting for me to read:

"It's for real! Forward this email to 25 people and Microsoft will send you a check with $1000!"

I think hard to myself: what would I do with an extra $1000? Is it in US dollars or Australian? I move my mouse and click the button delete.

We have all received emails like this. Since the beginning of email, forwarding jokes and good photos have become daily part of our lives. In the recent years, there has been an increasing amount of emails offering reward for forwarding it on, those warning of unspeakable punishment to those who do not. Some forwards, containing warnings of crime and bodily harm also delve into our inner self-security, making us wanting to do our friends the goods by forwarding it to them.

There are so many types of these emails:
- Email offering cash from the CEO of a large firm for forwarding to certain amount of people
- Emails offering health warning about using certain products or other possible exposure risks to cancer, asking you to forward to your friends to save their lives
- Emails describing how a particular crime is being conducted and warning that if you do not forward the email to your friends, their lives can be in danger
- Emails claiming each forward will generate certain amount of payment as donation to charity to save lives
- Emails simply asking you to forward and something nice/bad will happen

Are they for real? If I do not forward to twenty friends, will I get seven years of bad luck? What if someone only have nineteen friends on their email list? Will they get their bad luck reduced down to three days?

I decided to relief myself of the curiosity and cut and pasted some part of the mail content into Google. What I found, may save all my friends from the number of spam they receive from me and the number of forward clicks they need to make each day.

All those forward emails were hoaxes. Some of them might have been started by some bored youngsters dating as back as 1995, and some, simply have their wordings changed along the way to suit any current news and situations, making them sound very valid.

Currently, tracking every single recipient of an email is still technically not possible, according to Snopes.com, an urban legend and myth tracking website. In my own experience, I never got the money anyway so I had long figured. There are many types of hoax emails these days, concealing themselves with brand names and authority organizations, offering free money, merchandise and advice, starting rumors in the general public and at times, may be involved in the spread of viruses and worse, financial scams. An email circulating for a long time now, gives advice on surviving a heart attack by coughing vigorously, was in fact, false. How do we tell if it's true? Where do we get the information?

Check the email contents
If you have received such a forward, it's worth cut and pasting a couple of sentences into a search engine and search for the content online. If you have received it, it's likely that the email has been circulating the world and someone would have picked up its validity.

Read up on rumors but ignore them
It's worth going to spam checking websites to check what current rumors and hoax emails are being distributed. This way, simply by glancing over a forward, you are able to tell that it's just another spam and hit delete, saving your time to do something more useful.

Use common sense
If Microsoft wanted to give you money, they would have advertised through formal means of press releases and the media. If there was a proven major threat to our body by drinking water from plastic bottles, or a scientifically possibly way to prevent a heart attack, it would have been broad casted to everyone through the media. Do you ever think it would be unfair, if someone who actually needed to know, doesn't have an email account so they would miss out? If there was something important or exciting to be talked about it would have appeared in the news, so just no one misses out.

So I stop sending forwards?
It's a personal decision. Ethically, sending hoax email forwards can cause unnecessary stress and panic, and in a way, you just become one of the spammers yourself. We all like a good forwarded joke, photo or video clips. However, forwarding emails containing false and misleading content is not worth the effort.

Some useful sites to visit:
Google (www.google.com.au) a great search engine that will allow you a broader search into the email you are after.
Snope.com (www.snopes.com) read up on the latest hoaxes and myths. It is also a good website to check the validity of an email.
Truth or Fiction (www.truthorfiction.com) another great website to visit to check whether an email is a hoax.
Sophos Security (http://www.sophos.com/security/) has good information on email hoaxes as well as internet security.