Fight Forward Fraud!

I often get emails from friends and family that say things like “Microsoft is going to give you $100 if you forward this to 10 people.” Or claim that congress is about to limit free speech on the radio, or any number of anythings, or the sickest are the ones that tell you this horrible story and that you’ll help them by some super-rich person giving a donation in their behalf for each forward.

If any of these sound even remotely familiar, and you’ve forwarded them on, you’ve probably been a victim of “forward fraud.”  …Okay, okay, I just made that up right now… there’s no real name for it that I know of, but the simple fact is, almost any email that asks you to forward it, is not worth obeying

, is usually not true, and only annoys people who see it for what it is.

Be Savy, Join the Fight!

No matter what the cause or motivation may be, even if the story/petition/etc. is true, forwarding email is only a very infective way to raise awareness. If it’s something you feel strongly about, there should be a website, somewhere you can go to find out what you can do to fight for that cause. Email is relatively worthless, especially because so many fake stories, promotions, etc. are distributed by email. Nobody believes what they get in a forwarded email. Lets make email more believable by only forwarding stuff we have checked our thoroughly to verify that it is true. If you are not sure, you can look up most email stories on Snopes.com, a website that’s all about emailed fake stories, scams, etc.

If the email claims you will get money, or someone who needs it will get a donation, or there will be a reward of any sort, based on forwards, or that the forwards are being tracked,THE EMAIL IS ABSOLUTELY NOT TRUE! There is no way to track forwards of an email, and there never has been. So please do us all a favor and don’t forward it. In fact, send a link to this post to the person who sent it to you, and encourage them to forward this post to whoever sent it to them, and lets fight Forward Fraud together!

Don’t feel bad if you’ve done this. We all have at one time or another. Just help to prevent it in the future by forwarding this post to as many of your friends as you possibly can! 😉

Seriously though, you can send this post to anyone who forwards you by copying and pasting this address into an email: http://mormonlifehacker.com/?p=107