We’ve all been there: you open up your inbox to find an email with a subject like Fwd: Fw: FWD: VIRUS WARNING!!! You open it up, and after scrolling through countless layers of nested email headers, you find:
> >>>> A new virus WOBBLER is on the loose. It will arrive on > >>>> e-mail entitled > >>>> "Howto Give a Cat A Colonic" (Junk Mail). IBM and AOL > >>>> have announced > >>>> that it is very powerful. There is no remedy. > >>>> > >>>> It will eat all your information on the hard drive and > >>>> also destroy > >>>> Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer. > >>>> > >>>> DO NOT OPEN ANYTHING with this title and please pass > >>>> this message on > >>>> to all your contacts and anyone who uses your e-mail > >>>> facility.
Chances are, the virus warning or announcement that Bill Gates is sharing his fortune was sent by a well-meaning person, probably someone you care about. So how do you respond without hurting their feelings? On the June 11 episode of Spark, Merlin Mann will explain how to deal with junk email from people you love.
How do you deal with unwanted email forwards? Leave you tip in the comments below.
We routinely hit “Reply to all”, and say something like: “Yeah that’s a funny one! Good find,” we say, pretending that they’re in on the joke. We then continue: “For those who don’t know, here’s the SNOPES link about why this isn’t true.”
After getting about six or so links to Snopes.com (or equivalent) from us, our friends usually start double-checking things before hitting forward.
Usually, my initial urge to to go to the person’s house and taser them a few times, but fortunately, I don’t have a taser and I’m really too lazy to do all that anyway. Wishful thinking, don’t you know.
Meanwhile, in the real world, sometimes, I reply saying it’s junk, and to stop, or I mark it as spam and let it go, or I just delete it.
When I see someone do this the first time, I point them to Google and suggest that they do a bit of research before forwarding. I usually include a link to the urban myths/etc site which documents the specific thing they sent me.
I am met with a mixture of people who thank me for the help, to people who get extremely hostile.
There is sometimes a claim that it takes too much time to do the research, and they are only trying to be helpful. I remind them that it takes far less time overall if the person sending does the research rather than passing that responsibility onto everyone else.
I suggest that if they don’t have the time at the moment to do the research that it is better to wait until they do have the time before forwarding. Someone else may have the time and inform the same friends if the problem is legitimate.
If these types of messages continue to happen I move to hitting delete on the messages or simply blocking email from that person, depending on who it is.
I prefer Caleb’s approach as it pertains to ‘educating’ the offender (and audience) with links to Snopes.com, http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org (urban myths and legends) and this personal page of Donald Watrous at Rutgers: http://www.cs.rutgers.edu/~watrous/chain-letters.html
which has links to some ‘anti-chain letters’.
Then I cordially sign off with a friendly ‘Although I like hearing from you, please take me off of your distro list for these types of communications in the future.’ I don’t want to alienate myself from coworkers, family and friends. It’s a fine line.
If someone is sending hoax emails, I’ll usually email the person back with a correction and a ‘you can always check these things out by going to snopes.com’ type of comment. Usually people are a little embarrassed, but very sweet about it and send out a correction.
When it comes to forwards such as jokes or cheesy ‘why best friends are better than chocolate’ email, I just delete. I would feel bad telling someone not to send them, even if I actually find it a bit annoying.
I have been known to hit reply and say, politely, “Thank you for the virus warning, but being a Mac user I no longer have to worry about viruses, as there are none on Mac OS X to date. Have a nice day!”
As for hoaxes, I point to some quick google search results showing it as being a hoax.
Nora, you can do a follow up: “How do you deal with business emails where the poster forgot to BCC everyone?”
I usually email them and let them know about BCC, but in one case (I must have been cranky that day) I hit reply-all and introduced myself, and my services. Several others followed suit!
Cheers,
Dave
I’ve created a filter to deal with these. Usually the subject line has at least 2 “Fw:” or “Fwd:” (i.e. “Fw:Fw:” or “Fwd:Fwd:”). They are taken out of my inbox and thrown into a folder for me to check at some point later in the week.
Like most others here, I’ll respond to the hoaxes with a link to the appropriate page on Snopes.com.
The spread of misinformation annoys me more than jokes and other forwards. Those ones are easily solved by the delete key.
Normally, the subject line of the message is enough to tell me whether I even want to bother reading it. In most cases, I simply make use of that nifty key on the bottom left of the six-pack. Countless messages die instant deaths at a stroke of this lethal button. As my favorite cartoon hero used to put it:
“I have the power!”
Like many of the people above, I usually check out the accuracy of the information on Snopes or similar sites. If it proves to be bogus, I generally email back the sender (or sometimes everyone) a quick line something like "Thanks. (Un)fortunately, that's not quite right," and add the link(s).
If it's just isolated lame humour, I usually ignore it.
On occasion, where someone was sending me too many emails that end with a line like "Forward this to 1000 of your closest friends within 10 minutes or prepare to die a miserable death," I have replied with a polite note saying that I continued to welcome personal communication but to please take me off the list for the mass mailings.
Hi,
When I get a forwarded email, I scan through to make sure its fake (if i dont think it is i will participate in it), and if it is, and tells you to send it to 15 people within the hour (etc. etc…) I will email it to the person who sent it to me 15 times or so! It usually works!
Thanks,
Cormac
Hi,
When I get a forwarded email, I scan through to make sure its fake (if i dont think it is i will participate in it), and if it is, and tells you to send it to 15 people within the hour (etc. etc…) I will email it to the person who sent it to me 15 times or so! It usually works!
Thanks,
Cormac
Hi,
When I get a forwarded email, I scan through to make sure its fake (if i dont think it is i will participate in it), and if it is, and tells you to send it to 15 people within the hour (etc. etc…) I will email it to the person who sent it to me 15 times or so! It usually works!
Thanks,
Cormac
Hi,
When I get a forwarded email, I scan through to make sure its fake (if i dont think it is i will participate in it), and if it is, and tells you to send it to 15 people within the hour (etc. etc…) I will email it to the person who sent it to me 15 times or so! It usually works!
Thanks,
Cormac
Hi,
When I get a forwarded email, I scan through to make sure its fake (if i dont think it is i will participate in it), and if it is, and tells you to send it to 15 people within the hour (etc. etc…) I will email it to the person who sent it to me 15 times or so! It usually works!
Thanks,
Cormac
Hi,
When I get a forwarded email, I scan through to make sure its fake (if i dont think it is i will participate in it), and if it is, and tells you to send it to 15 people within the hour (etc. etc…) I will email it to the person who sent it to me 15 times or so! It usually works!
Thanks,
Cormac
Hi,
When I get a forwarded email, I scan through to make sure its fake (if i dont think it is i will participate in it), and if it is, and tells you to send it to 15 people within the hour (etc. etc…) I will email it to the person who sent it to me 15 times or so! It usually works!
Thanks,
Cormac
It usually depends on the email. If its one of those send to 100 friends types, I usually delete it. Although if it is worth sending along (cute pictures or nice thoughts) I’ll take a little time and delete the send to garbage. I’ll then send it along with a note like “this is funny” or”I saw this and thought of you”. Then that lets the person I send it to decide to send it to their friends or delete it. No guilt or bad mojo.
For more than two FW, I have them filtered to the Junk folder, which I check occassionally. Other than that I look at them, then usually junk them.
It usually depends on the email. If its one of those send to 100 friends types, I usually delete it. Although if it is worth sending along (cute pictures or nice thoughts) I’ll take a little time and delete the send to garbage. I’ll then send it along with a note like “this is funny” or”I saw this and thought of you”. Then that lets the person I send it to decide to send it to their friends or delete it. No guilt or bad mojo.
Remarkably Thunderbird catches most real junk mail, so only individuals listed in my contacts succeed in forwarding their ‘treasures’.
Generally I don’t respond until the second or third infraction, then I write them a short sweet little request NOT to clutter my in-box with ‘unessential’ messages as I barely have time to deal with my daily ‘essential’ mail.
Rarely, I have to send the same person a second ‘reminder’. In one very unusual case I actually added a close friend’s email address to my ‘Spam’ list and informed him, if he ‘really needs’ to contact me to call my cellphone or send a text message. He never realized why I made the request and was (thankfully) never offended.
Ciao, Yoel
I do not leave messages on cellular phones. I believe that the “misssed call” message is a message. That means call me back because I called you and you missed my call.
Also. I don’t like it when someone calls my home and leaves the message, “Hi Jane, It’s Jack. Call me”. What do you want? Tell me the details so I can get to work on it. If it is a pleasure call just call back. Unless of course it’s my father from out of state who deliberatly calls when he knows i’m not at home so i must return his “LONG DISTANCE” call.
Finally, I do not answer my cellular phones message (oops) voice mail. I believe since you are calling me on a portable telephone if you miss me and i’m not at home too bad.
I’m a mom i have 3 friends, 3 kids, 2 ex-husbands and a job. my circle isn’t that big.
One last comment…I hate when people say phone and cell. Does any one know what they really are anymore or am i just getting old?
I ignore them.
I’ve given up trying to educate even my own relatives who persist in this behaviour. Once in a long while I’ll advise a sender that they probably have an infection if I suspect they don’t even know the messages are going out.
By far the least time consuming way to deal with them is not to bother reading or responding to any message where the forwards take up the first screen. I also have a 20k filter on my Eudora mail client that prevents downloading larger messages unless I choose to do so. It’s a hold-over from the days of dial-up, but keeping it lets me delete a lot of forwarded junk from the mailserver without ever downloading it.
Yes, I may miss that one in 500 that is funny enough to pass on, but for a quicker comedy fix I can read the virus hoaxes at Symantec.
Both my mother and mother-in-law used to foward us every warning on the web. (hard-drive-wiping viruses, exploding cell phones, HIV-laden syringe traps, poison perfume parking lot kidnappers – you name it)
Of course, they would cc everyone they knew, and include every address from the previous sendings – sometimes 2-3 back.
I replied to every message, blind cc’ing every address in the thread, gently explaining:
1) the importance of the blind cc
2) a 2-line summary of why it was a hoax
3) the relevant link to snopes, and
4) how to use snopes in the future.
Slowly, the stream turned into a trickle. Either they’ve learned to screen the garbage, or they’ve just stopped sending it to us. (Either is fine by me.)
Recently I did this, then received a nice note from my mother saying thanks, maybe her hoax-spam-loving friend will learn, and stop. (Though she herself had lost the snopes address…)
Baby steps to a hoax-spam free world.
@ Derek,
I’m going to raise the BCC issue with Merlin. It’s one of my pet peeves…
I tend to get more chain letter, warning style messages (not really hoaxes), and funny photos. I guess I’m lazier than most on this thread: I just delete them! I find most of the people who send me these things are just the kind of people who will do that. And once in a while, I roll my eyes at things but then they turn out to be pretty neat (a video of ballet dancers missing limbs was very amazing!).
I prefer to take a bit of a ‘shoot to kill’ method, where I delete such chain letters on sight.
Usually I delete them. However, I have a relative who sends me nothing but chain letters (almost daily). I got so frustrated lately that I sent a Reply All (and even pasted some of the nested e-mails in the adress field) with the following:
______
You’ve been hoaxed!
While the story of 14 month old Aleksandra Kuczma being burned in a house fire as a baby is true … it happened in Poland in 2005! (3 years ago) … and a bank account was set up to help people make donations to pay for Aleksandra’s medical bills … no one gets 3 cents for forwarding e-mails.
http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_ola_kuczma.htm
What gets me is that some a**hole is using a family’s real life tragedy to spread useless e-mails and wasting our time when we fall for it and continue spreading these false claims.
Please help put an end to it and stop forwarding these e-mails.
_______
This happened on Jun 3 … I haven’t heard from this person since.
If they’re generally nice folks, I send them a reply with the Snopes link and they often thank me. However, if they’re repeat offenders, I press “REPLY ALL” with the link. I also add the link to further related Snopes articles, incase they’re too lazy to read on. And if the OP has not bothered to delete the other addresses they’ve gotten the garbage from (which often happens), I email them too if I’m particularly irked by something utterly ridiculous. Gee – you think these folks would take a hint. I also wrote this poem a while back…
Netiquette
When I get things from others, more often than not,
it’s mass-forwarded without bother, to the sender’s whole lot
And what I most despise are those damned urban legends,
as well as “Angel Blessings” that are sent without end
(that you’re *commanded* to forward to *each* one of your friends,
*and within 7 minutes* – on which your luck depends!)
For crying out loud, that’s not “communication”!
This misuse of The Net’s an abomination!!
(And BTW just because someone sent it to you,
does NOT mean what was sent is true!
For Pity’s Sake, go check its validity
See SNOPES before perpetuating insanity!
For all the time that you’re on The Net,
such endeavours would be time well-spent)
Another thing that I find ponderous
are the things written by, quote, “Anonymous”.
No wonder the author always dies poor!
Without their name attached, they remain obscure!
Few really bother to find out the source,
and “quote” with abandon without any remorse.
(I wonder if their co-workers should take such a course,
claiming “no one” did it, though the work was yours!)
Oh, I forgot one more thing, and you know who you are!
Wasting my time with better things to do by far
than heeding your request, to send back to you
the thing you just sent *me*, or our friendship’s not “true”!?
Is *that* how you count us, is that what we *mean*?
Is that all that our friendship has ever been?!
I’ll refrain from proclaiming it obviously absurd,
for I’m kind enough to abstain from your feelings being hurt
(But if you *keep* pushing your luck, I’ll be *forced* to be curt!)
What annoys me most about these is not the e-mail itself, it’s the long list of e-mail addresses I get with them. It also means that my e-mail address has been sent to everyone that the sender knows!
Every so often, I send out an e-mail to the ‘culprits’ telling them that they do not have my permission to send my e-mail address to other people. I tell them that if they want to send an e-mail to a long list of people, they should send the e-mail to themselves and put everyone else in the BCC box. I also tell them to delete all previous e-mail addresses in the body of the message, when they are forwarding something.
I’ve found this pretty effective, and even the worst culprits have got the message.
Okay – with 24 comments, you don’t really need to hear from me, but here I am leaving a comment anyway.
I have this problem a lot, because I have two almost completely separate lives – one in my academic/professional sphere, populated by people who in general, are web and e-mail savvy. In my other sphere, that of my religious, church-going circle, the great majority of folks aren’t as well-educated or experienced about the “internets.”
So, about twice a week, I get e-mails from people in that well-meaning, church-going sphere about kids with cancer getting $.10 per forward, Gap jeans giving away freebies, and TERRIBLE VIRUSES to be afraid of. When I receive them, I do a quick, one step google search using two keywords from that e-mail. I then hit “reply all” and type three sentences:
1) Dear friend: I typed these two search terms into Google to find out whether this e-mail was a legitimate story or not. 2) This link (insert link) documents that this e-mail is spam or phishing – it has been created to waste your time, or harvest your personal information for misuse. 3) Don’t spread the spam – check before you send and save your friends the annoyance.
That way, it takes very little of my time to educate these friends of mine and also shows them what they need to do to do the same.
One thing that surprises me about these emails is that people will send you email hoaxes that you can’t believe they haven’t seen before, such as the Bill Gates will give you money for forwarding this email. How old is that thing, after all?
^ Indeed, Nora! I’ve received the “girl with cancer – and the poem she wrote – sent by her doctor” so many times I’ve lost count. It’s been circulating since 1999!(See Snopes for the REAL author of that poem!) The “boycott such and such a gas station – a brainstorm of a former C*ca-C*la executive – forward to everyone and we’ll reach MILLIONS in DAYS!!!” has been around since 2004! But the stupidest yet, by far, is “the highest response EVER Phone-In survey” done by CBC no less about people believing in God – after the SCANDALOUS and SHOCKING news that “So help me God” had been removed from the oath one takes in court!?! *sigh* I won’t even explain where THAT one came from…(it is…to weep…)
How do you deal with unwanted email forwards?
when i check my yahoo account i view only unread messages, thenm i check off ALL messages and then uncheck the ones i want to read (5% of all email i receive)
problem solved.
I am alos a reknowned hater of fws. the reason being i once received spam from some one else on the fw list (i did not know this person) and after a few more emails i finally blocked that person.
if i ever fw anything that was fw’ed to me i DELETE the addresses which are usually 90% of the length of the email.
I have considered putting a disclaimer in my signature that I will not reply to chain letters, requests to forward something that will bring good luck or prevent bad luck, etc, but am also afraid of offending people, so I mostly just ignore those things.
I like humourous stuff, but am not one to pass it on.