I HATE SPAM!

I used to share jokes and other fun stuff with friends and family all the time. It seemed that every time I forwarded something that I thought was cool, one of my friends or family would reply, telling me what I'd sent was a hoax, and I had to then email everyone again and apologize. Sigh!

How are you supposed to know what's ok to forward? Personally, I rarely forward anything anymore, it's just not worth it. Someone turned me on to a great site for checking out emails, and now I check out EVERYTHING before I even think of sharing.
Snopes2. This site is interesting reading, and you'll recognize a lot of familiar stuff.

Now, I have a strict policy not to forward anything that says “forward to___number of people” because it shares email addresses of everyone involved, with spammers somewhere along the way. Guaranteed. Every time I’ve done this, I get more spam within just a couple days. For instance, you share an email with 20 friends, but then multiply that by 20 strangers, x20 strangers, x20 strangers, x20 strangers...within days your email address and the email addresses of your 20 friends could potentially be shared with 360,000 strangers, and any of them could be “spammers”.
These things make me so angry because they take advantage of good people with good intentions who want to share something cool, or fun, or informative and they think they’re doing a good thing.

Occasionally though, you’ll get something that is worth sharing, in which case, good policies are:
1) When you receive something that seems worth passing on, check it out first to see if it’s legit, snopes2.com or any number of similar sites.
2) Cut and paste the relevant part of the text and start a new email, rather than forwarding, ‘cause often there are old email addresses still attached, that also get forwarded.
3) NEVER send to everyone on your address list. Just share it with close friends/family who you think will appreciate it.
4) ALWAYS put every recipient’s email address in the “BCC” rather than “TO”. Or, send to one person at a time. This keeps everyone’s email address private.
5) NEVER ask people to forward an email, unless it’s something that is truly an emergency, and you’ve verified that it’s true


I have these policies because I HATE SPAM, and I want to keep my friends and family safe from spam too.

Please continue to send me stuff you think is cool, I like that you think of me! Just please check it out first, and keep my email address private if you send it.