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Handling Chain E-Mails, Forward This On Or Else!

Is anybody else getting fed up with seeing these spam messages? They normally go along the lines of.

"Wow you're not going to believe this but it's true, I did this and got asked out by 10 boys in 1 week, you've got to do it too! You need to forward this message on straight away, to 5 friends and you get asked out once, to 10 and you'll be asked out 5 times and to 20 top be asked out 10 times.

If you don't forward this on and break the chain you'll be dead by this time next week".

Obviously I don't write these for a living! I just can't believe how gullible some people are, even in the last office I worked people would endlessly send these on. I just used to delete them, funnily enough I'm still alive and kicking. The same people that forwarded them on would then complain when e-mail access was taken away from them because of spam abuse. If adults are gullible enough imagine what affect they have on children?

I know my daughter gets at least 3 or 4 of these a week from her friends, the thing is if you look at the messages carefully you can see the real motive. As they are forwarded on they collect literally hundreds of valid e-mail addresses. All it takes if for one of these forwarded messages to fall into the hands of a spammer and straight away your children are getting the latest penis extension news, hard on tablets to their inbox. When I set My daughter up with e-mail I did it using 2 GMail accounts. One was there for her friends, the other for family. They both feed into one so it's not a big problem checking them. Even though she is quite wise when it comes to giving out her e-mail details it's easy to see that 100% of the spam that comes in comes to her "friends" e-mail account. Through no fault of her own she gets about 30 spam messages a day. Did you know that by forwarding on a message to 2 recipients and not hiding (BCC) the others details you're exposing their accounts to e-mail abuse?

I've explained that with all the best will in the world not forwarding on an e-mail can not give you bad luck/kill you, is it worth having a word with your kids?