Email Forwards (Pt 1)

I know most of you are savvy Internet readers. After all, you’ve managed to read my words right now. It’s no small feat, really. You probably bookmarked this site (hopefully), and that involves using shortcuts or using the menu bar on your browser. Seems like a simple thing for you, but for the 60-something year old who never had a computer growing up, it can be a very difficult task. Anyway, that’s not my point. I’ve noticed something really interesting, almost a paradox in the “average person’s” view of “The Internet”. First, they somehow have this belief that this whole Internet is like one gigantic computer or something that can be turned on and off as easy as unplugging a blow-dryer. Second thing is, they trust it and don’t trust it, at the same time, which is very odd. Case in point: the media and security “experts” say the Internet is unsafe. Accounts can be hacked, your whole life can be found with a click of the button, etc, etc. So the regular person, naturally, becomes very cautious of entering any personal information. “But it’s personal, and the bad hackers can see what I type!” Sure, if you’re doing online banking on a public terminal, anything is possible and always assume everything is logged. Makes sense. Yet, it’s these same suspicious people who will give money to political refugees from Nigeria. “Ooh, he says if I give him a hundred dollars now, he will wire me a million later! Ohkay, sounds good!”

I don’t have the statistics on me, but I’m pretty sure that hackers have more luck of getting someone’s password through phishing scams rather than straight out hacking a company’s website. What that means is it’s more likely that you’re giving away your personal information, rather than the hacker taking the information. If you aren’t going to trust your own financial institution with your personal information, you should be just as suspicious of emails from people you barely talked to in the past decade, because most likely it’s an internet worm that uses an infected person’s address book to propogate itself. Be consistent, that’s all I’m saying. And be smart. Think about it, if a scammer sends out 1 million fake emails asking for money, if even 0.1% respond, that’s 1 thousand people. With a dollar a person, that’s a thousand bucks. Don’t be part of that .1 percent.

You know another thing that fools people easily? Forwards. I’m not sure why people start them. Maybe they get a kick out of fooling a lot of people. I dunno. Then again, I don’t know why shows like Punk’d and Jackass are so popular either. Most forwards I get, I junk them. There are usually 3 main types of forwards: the funny ones (or at least the authors think they’re funny), the news-worthy ones (or at least the authors think it’s newsworthy) and the sentimental ones (usually talking about how precious life is, blah blah blah). I usually read the funny ones. I dunno, sometimes they’re good for a laugh. Sometimes I like to feel smart by seeing through their dumb joke. But at least they’re entertaining.

I usually skip the news-worthy ones. Most are misrepresented, blown out of proportion or just plain wrong. Scamming letters fall under this category. They try to mix just enough truth with their fiction to make it seem legit. And then it gets forwarded to other people, spreading the lies even further. One great site devoted to stopping this type of malicious email is Snopes.com. Try it. Love it. Learn it. It’s great. And yes, this type of email is malicious because it’s utterly worthless, you can’t get even get a chuckle out of them, and when you pass it on, you are unintentionally spreading lies and gossip. If you do feel the need to pass this important information onto others, especially to me, do me a favor. Check it out on snopes first. If it’s listed as a hoax, please don’t send it. Stop the cycle!

One forward in particular, really affected my Real Life. Have you seen this one? Basically, some atheist is trying to ban all religion from the airwaves. And it is our religious and civic duty as God-fearing Christians to write in and let the FCC know about this great injustice! Somehow, some of my church deacons got a hold of this particular forward and decided to do something about it. They printed out the form that was included in the forward, and had everyone in the congregation sign it. (Well, except me, cause I heard of it before.) Then they mailed it to the FCC. Of course, it was a hoax. And I’m sure someone somewhere is laughing about it… if he ever found out what my church did.

The last ones, the sentimental ones, I sometimes read them, if I’m in the mood. They are usually the same heartwarming, “Oh you have to be reminded how good your life is” type stuff. Yeah, sometimes it makes me think, most often it makes me want to hurl, but that’s just me. It’s very comforting to know that my mom thinks of me enough to send me a card with a bunch of roses on it…. TMI? Well tough, live with it!