Pet Peeve of the Week: Email Forwards

As always seems to happen around this time of the year, I've come down with some sort of illness and am feeling a bit under the weather. So because I am all nasty and sick, this post will be especially bitter!

What prompted the subject of today's tirade was a message I received from a friend this morning, asking me to check into an email she had been forwarded that was "heartbreaking." However, she had a feeling that it was a scam, and had remembered that years ago I sent a diatribe against forwarded emails to all of my close friends, informing them of how the vast majority of these sorts of messages are bogus. The one my friend had received yesterday was entitled, "Please read for my daughter" and included a bunch of sappy sayings like, "Just for this afternoon, I will unplug the telephone and keep the computer off, and sit with you in the backyard and blow bubbles." At the end of the list of "Just for todays" was a plea from a 29-year-old father (a policeman) whose daughter Rachel has brain cancer. They didn't have enough money for an operation she needed, so for some unknown reason, AOL and ZDNet were going to pledge 32 cents for every three people the message was forwarded to in order to raise money for Rachel's urgent procedure.

Now, before I go any further... what is wrong with this picture? Why would AOL and ZDNet do this? (My point being, there are several people in need of help in the world and in this country--why would these firms open themselves to a barrage of sob stories by agreeing to help this one particular child?) How exactly would they track the email forwards? Why aren't they promoting their good deed? Wouldn't it get some sort of news coverage, if only locally? If they were going to help, is this really the most efficient and effective way to raise money--to forward around emails and give 32 cents for every three people reached? Why wouldn't the father include his phone number and address in case someone wanted to do more for Rachel's cause?

Because the entire situation is completely made up. I found that out in about 2 seconds by typing "brain cancer" into Snopes' Urban Legend Search Engine. This particular email about Rachel's brain cancer had been circulating in some way, shape or form since the year 2000! If you're curious about it's history, here's the link. To be extremely clear - Rachel DOES NOT EXIST.

Snopes.com's main page has a category listing of urban legends and forwarded emails... most that I have received fall under the "Inboxer Rebellion" section. Even things as innocuous as the pictures circulating of Tiger Woods' supposed house are not real.

Along the same lines, I hate those emails that end with asking you to forward the message to ten million other people. It is the year 2008, people!!! STOP THE MADNESS! These emails have been around since 1996, and anyone sending them at this point is just screaming to the world that he or she is an amateur and completely new to the Internet and/or email. I have yet to find a person who actually likes to receive these types of messages. I promise you, nothing bad will befall you if you don't forward a chain email on. In fact, I will go so far as to guarantee that good karma will come your way if you do NOT forward the message any further! If you are just too superstitious to believe that you will not forever be cursed for refusing to follow the demands of some anonymous spammer, then you may want to download the "Chain Letter Nullification" certificate that can be found in this hilarious post by a guy who seems even more fed up than I am about the proliferation of chain emails.

I will admit that it is indeed sad that there are still people out there who knowingly create these types of scams. I'm not really sure what they get out of it. And I fully realize that most people just hit "forward" without thinking through whether or not the subject of the email is plausible--they're not meaning any harm. But if you want to actually help children who are sick--give to a legitimate charity. Forwarding an email initiated by some crazy bastard is NOT going to help anyone, all it's going to do is give the creep who came up with the idea a cheap thrill when he sees it's made its way onto Urban Legend trackers.

So the lesson of the day is... if you get a forwarded email, use Snopes.com (or About.com's Urban Legend Netlore page) to investigate its validity, and then send the link proving its falsehood back to the sender so that they get the hint. You may have to do this a few times to the same person, forwarding seems to be an addiction of sorts for some people!

Alright, I have gotta go wire transfer some money to this guy in Nigeria who really needs my help... I'm pretty sure that one's not a scam, right?

- e