Forwarders of Junk Mail

The subject of today's cretinous blog post are people who forward junk emails. It drives me mad when someone sends me any of this crap, here's one I've seen that I cannot believe people fall for...

Hi, everyone

The Ericsson Company is distributing free computer lap-tops in an attempt to match Nokia that has already done so. Ericsson hopes to increase its popularity this way. For this reason, they are giving away the new WAP Laptops. All you need to qualify is to send this mail to 8 people you know. Within 2 weeks, you will receive Ericcson T18. But if you can send it to 20 people or more, you will receive Ericsson R320.

Make sure to send a copy to: anna.swelung@ericcson.com

Think about it. You send it to 20 people. You get a laptop. They each send it to 20 people, thats 21 laptops. Each of those people send it to 20 people thats 401 laptops. Then 8001, 160001, 3200001...and so on. Don't. Be. An. Idiot. 

When I tell people not to send me this crap, for the reasons below, I'm accused of being a spoil sport, or told "what harm can it do?" Well...Scams, phishing schemes, viruses, and hoaxes. They can harbour, viruses, worms, trojan horses, or, in the case of links, to take you some place to steal your money, your identity, or anything else that has yet to be created.

As for those extremley important virus warnings or save this lost child emails or do x to find you true love, or even more pointless jokes and pictures. All of which encourage you to email all your friends to spread the message. Whilst they may appear harmless, and you think you are doing the recipients a favour, you're not. By sending them an email, you are revealing thier email address to anybody else who decides to forward it to their gullible friends and their gullible friends and so on and so on. All it takes is for one of those emails to find its way into the inbox of a spammer or oppourtunistic criminal who now has access to hundreds or even thousands of verified email addresses to send their crap to, or to sell on to people who will.

So, if ever you get a peice of crap junk mail send to you by someone you know, reply to them telling them not to expose your email address by sending you this crap! Aaaand delete.

For more info, visit this website. http://www.hoax-slayer.com/ericsson-free-lap-top.shtml

Chris