Posted by Morrow on August 20, 2009, 12:37 pm
71.84.97.117
Advice from Snopes
Here is a nice little tidbit of information that came my way today.
(I have seen this or something similar before...as you may have as well).
And if any of you are wondering why I didn't return something
to you that said something like "if I don't get this back
I'll"...or, "See how many flowers you can get back," or "Forward
this to 10 people in the next 5 mins. or something bad will happen to
you," etc. The following is why I don't send them back:
Advice from Snopes.com
1) Any time you see an E-Mail that says forward this on to
"10" of your friends, or sign this petition, or you'll get bad luck,
good luck, or whatever, it almost always has anE-Mail tracker
program attached that tracks the cookies and E-Mails of those folks
you forward to.
The host sender is getting a copy each time it gets forwarded and
then is able to get lists of "active" E-Mails to use in SPAM E-Mails,
or sell to other spammers.
2) Almost all E-Mails that ask you to add your name and
forward on to others are similar to that mass letter years ago that
asked people to send business cards to the little kid in Florida who
wanted to break the Guinness Book of Records for the most cards.
All it was, and all any of this type of E-Mail is, is a way to
get names and "cookie" tracking information for telemarketers and
spammers - - to validate active E-Mail accounts for their own
profitable purposes.
You can do your friends and family members a GREAT favor
(PLEASE) by sending this information to them; you will be providing a
service to your friends, and will be rewarded by not getting
thousands of spam E-Mails in the future!
If you have been sending out (FORWARDING) the above kinds of
E-Mail, now you know why you get so much SPAM!
Do yourself a favor and STOP adding your name(s) to those
types of listings regardless how inviting they might sound! You may
think you are supporting a GREAT cause, but you are NOT in the long
run. Instead, you will be getting tons of junk mail later! Plus, we
are helping the spammers get rich! Let's don't make it easy for them!
Also: E-Mail petitions are NOT acceptable to Congress or any
other organization. To be acceptable, petitions must have a signed
signature and full address of the person signing the petition.
Read the full story here:
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/inboxer.asp
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