Stop Email Forwards and Video Emails

The same happens on Facebook now with all the stupid claims that if you forward this funwall message to 15 of your friends so you could save Facebook from shutting down your Facebook page or those who say if don’t forward this on you will have very bad luck or some sort of rubbish. I have experienced these and now if they bother me I just ditch them in the bin.

Then videos I agree with Chris on this subject just send your friend the link instead of sending the whole freaking file.

The same happens on Facebook now with all the stupid claims that if you forward this funwall message to 15 of your friends so you could save Facebook from shutting down your Facebook page or those who say if don’t forward this on you will have very bad luck or some sort of rubbish. I have experienced these and now if they bother me I just ditch them in the bin.

Then videos I agree with Chris on this subject just send your friend the link instead of sending the whole freaking file.

FW: FW: FW: FW: FW: Funny Cats

I Hate Those

FW: FW: FW: FW: FW: Funny Cats

I Hate Those

FW: FW: FW: FW: FW: Funny Cats

I Hate Those

i crush them

I ALWAYS hated emails like that. But, thanks toy MySpace and Facebook, now they have a new place to be spammed at. If me not responding to chain mail will give me so many years of bad luck, I’ll risk it. One thing I used to do was reply to the sender and all the people they sent it to and say “Please don’t send me this crap or else” and I, yet, haven’t seen anymore chain mails.

I’ve had friends send them to me and I never respond. I don’t really believe in bad luck. I can’t even remember the last time I got a chain letter. They just know I won’t play along. As for forwards that aren’t factual, I take everything with a grain of salt, especially if it is anything having to do with politics or religion, or something like that.

Those emails are so annoying and useless!

yes i to recommend Snopes, its a good website for debunking all sorts of myths or for validating something as true

I just HATE these e-mails! I really don’t understand why people have to make videos/PowerPoint presentations to give you the same old “Pass this on to blah blah blah, or blah blah blah will happen.” Cant stand them, I delete them right away, as everyone should.
-Ruben

I tried to tell my family members (who aren’t all that computer familiar) to a: never open messages they don’t know who it is from, and b: don’t send the stupid chain mails, just delete them like everyone else… and recently I keep getting a specific scam where “CEO of Bank in African is in need of help to transfer $…. amount to America, and you will receive… …%”… Obviously it gets reported!!!!!! I’m so sick of creeps that enjoy causing more hazard to other peoples lives…

Things like in this topic about Email drive me crazy. I try to tell people if you are going to do, mass emails send them BCC I am really tired of seeing 500 email addresses in emails before I get to the message. In addition, I will not read anything that has been forwarded (even from my own Mother). Come on people type your own mail. I will receive 10 forwarded emails from my mother she also sends them to my grandfather and then I will receive the same 10 forwarded emails from my grandfather. Its like if I took all of my USPS junk mail and mailed it to you. It would get old after a while having to go through all of that mail every day just to fish out a birthday card or a paycheck. Sorry I complained so much. You hit a good topic that I am passionate about.

One time my teacher sent an email to all of her classmates (including me), and next thing I know almost every kid in the freakin’ class is sending me chain letters… About animals.

seriously, my inbox is full of those….. i HATE EM!!!!!!!

seriously, my inbox is full of those….. i HATE EM!!!!!!!

I hate those kind of emails. Just hate them. Everyone has a friend who is like that though. If that friend sees something “amazing” or “moving” on YouTube they send it to everyone and their brother. Then that same friend 1 week later sends you another and another and another. AGH! I also hate when I get email from a political campaign. It makes me crazy!

I think that email forwarding is very useful when used properly. It is nice if you get something and you need to quickly send it to someone to use the forwarding function. Like yesterday I sent an email containing pictures to some of my friends, but didn’t have one of my friend’s email address. The ones that got my email just forwarded my original message to him. That is what forwarding should be used for not annoying people.

BTW does any other email service besides GMAIL have built-in chat???

No matter if I get a forwarding chain emails, I never forward them to others. If you do not know where the original location of where that chain email came from, then you must automatically think it came from a untrusted source. This is a sure way to get spam and get others to get spam as well. Would you open your front door to a stranger? What is the difference with emails?

Just another thing that I’ve noticed with this… When you get weird e-mails and they have an unsubscribe link @ the bottom… don’t use em’. Just add the address or host mask to your junk or spam filter. I’m telling you, you will have more problems if you use the unsubscribe link… it doesn’t work.

good point ive emailed u twice with serious questions and im sure spam is why they arnt gettin read

I’m not part of any of these forwarding groups. there is already enough content on the Internet.. I don’t need anybody’s help to waste time.
In fact there is so much content on the Internet that I think it has a become common practice to trust sources. Not necessarily because we are lazy but because we have no time.
I do my research if I do not trust the source And I have enough interest but I put my trust on certain sources. Many things if I am iffy on I won’t even look into it.

oh well, almost all of us receives that kind of emails… people doing that wants us to freak out to believe them… i think that no one would do such kind of messages if no one would follow and forward it… video forwarding is really time consuming…we should always remember that email is created for a purpose, a good purpose…

Very useful topic Chris, and thank you… Personally.. I simply delete them, no questions asked. If you want to get me involved in something… -you- tell me about it, rather than sending me an email that someone else sent you. to make it simpler, one can also set ones email client such as Gmail, to direct all forwarded mail immediately to your spam folder with the use of filtering rules.

Same as everybody here we hated those emails being in our inbox. The question wil you have the guts to tell that to the sender? “Hey dude, don’t send me this bogus crap!” I usually can’t/ and don’t for the simple reason that they might take the wrong way. Since I dont see that friend anymore, that may be the last time we may get in touch. My friends and relatives like to forward those type of emails to their entire contacts. They may not thnk that there’s nothing really wrong with it coz for them it’s just email and it may be fun. Coz I’m sure they find interesting and hoping, u’ll find it the same.

I think sometimes people use it to say HI and hello. Instead of actually saying hi to you, they would rather send you a joke or somekind of warning or news to indirectly let you know that “hey dude, I’m still here”. I do get those surprises once in awhile from a friend that I haven’t seen for years. I dont really mind at all.

Come to think of it though, on the contrary to my initial feeling, i dont really hate it that much. In fact, it does not bother me really. I do have filters setup but occasionally some slipped thru. I do get the worst spamming from unknown source anyway. If I can handle those, I dont see why i can’t do the same for my friends who really dont have spamming intention. or perhaps i do the same exact thing. i guess what goes around really comes around…:>

I bet that 100% of those “save XXXXX” e-mails are fake. I don’t get as money forwarded e-mails as I used to. I guess all of the jokes have already been passed around and with that advent of YouTube, you don’t have to e-mail videos any money. Just upload them share the URL.

FYI: I’m not the Doug that sent Chris the original e-mail.

man i keep getting tons of junk mail e-mails really nothing i can do i even block them they just change there e-mail and send the same crap i might think of blocking them by there body cuz most are the same crap

Everytime I receive one of these emails, I email the person who sent it to me and ask them not to forward me anything. I see these emails as another form of spam and really hate going into my inbox and seeing them.

i’m very proud to say that i delete chain letters and similar things as soon as i get them :)

i’m very proud to say that i delete chain letters and similar things as soon as i get them :)

My mother is one of those people who forward emails without actually validating any of the content first, which might partially be why I didn’t let her know my email address for years. However, no matter how much I told her that most of what she was forwarding me was incorrect, she still didn’t seem to grasp that a) what she was sending me was incorrect news and b) that I really didn’t want to receive any of those forwards. She found out the hard way when she saw that I had a folder for her emails…with 20 unread out of 22. It’s hard to get these people to understand that you have to search the content before you pass it on as truth.

I would certainley hate that. Luckily the only emails I get are from the websites that im members of. I hardly get junk mail so thats a Plus. I use Yahoo Mail for my email. I’ve never experienced this so I cant say much about it but for the people who do these things it would be nice if they would BCC them so that you dont reveal Hundreds of Emails.

Are you listening, grandma?

Are you listening, grandma?

My family members are the worst offenders on forwarding chain letters. Try convincing your mother that she really won’t have 7 years of bad luck by breaking the chain though…

Ahh, so true. I was in class a couple of days ago when my teacher asked aloud if she should respond to an email claiming that her life was in danger. Me and my mate (also pretty geeky) just glanced at each other, and couldn’t hold down the laughter. I imagine that maybe in 1999 some less savvy computer owners may have fell into this, but now….come on! I know people over 60 years old who are aware of how these e-mails work.

I really don’t like the chain letter type of e-mail they are always so long and I just delete them. E-mail is good for anything short and to the point.

i hate chain mail i get over 100 messages a day and over 90% of it is crap

hay chris i like ur screen saver on ur pc monitors

hay chris i like ur screen saver on ur pc monitors

Great Tip, email forwards are the bane of my inbox I tell everyone dont send me email forwards but they still do. Thanks!

I do not like these types of e-mails either… there is just too much junk that people pass along. I do not open e-mails from those that I don’t know and I have one rule for friends and family… send me junk mail and get blocked. I like my e-mail inbox to remain nice and clean with only trusted e-mails.

Every morning at work my co-workers spend at least half an hour forwarding everything they find on the internet to everyone in the office. Most of them come from one customer who sends it all to them and me. And of course they send it all to me again even though I got it from him too. I have since filtered messages with FW:FW:FW:, and FW:FW:FW:FW: in the subject so they are automatically deleted from the gmail settings. This helps to cut down on the copies of each junk mail I get. There are lots of filters you can come up with. If your mail provider, server, or mail client is configurable than configure it. People act like they have to get every email everyone sends them and thats simply not true anymore.

i hate those chain letters i always would get them in myspace they would bother me all the time i would think i had a new message when in reality it was just some dumb chain letter

Chris listens to Black Flag?

Chris listens to Black Flag?

I just mailed this video to over 1000 people.

I are teh rox! I can has an email!

if you dont like it dont fuckin sendem out you fuckin pansay lol bbc line then it gets delete then you kno it that its somone want to ask you question an if you dont like it fuck off you pussy ass videos!!!

if you dont like it dont fuckin sendem out you fuckin pansay lol bbc line then it gets delete then you kno it that its somone want to ask you question an if you dont like it fuck off you pussy ass videos!!!

i hate chain letters like those i would always get them in my myspace inbox and i would be all happy thinking i got a new message when it really was just some idiot posting a chain letter

YOUR A FUCKING NERD

YOUR A FUCKING NERD

YOUR A FUCKING NERD

I delete all the video chain jokes too…there’s a lot of Power Point stuff as well. I just delete them all. I just don’t like them. And I don’t “RE” my mails - even less my junk mail to others. You made a good vid there. Thanks!

Two things I never do on myspace

1. Respond to chain letters
2. Take stupid surveys

Though there are some surveys that I choose to take because the responses that they bring are actually interesting, for the most part, I find them very boring.

Chris and comment readers,

As I agree that fake e-mails like these that claim something totally impossible are incredibly annoying, I strongly DISAGREE with the fact that we should reply to people that send us these e-mails in a cruel or rude way. It seems whenever (rarely) I send one of these e-mails out, I get some nasty e-mail in return sending me six or so links to sites proving whatever e-mail it was wrong. Doing this doesn’t make me want to stop sending these out, but just send every one I get to the person that just sent me that.

So keep in mind: If someone sends you one of these stupid e-mails, chances are they know it isn’t true so DON’T PATRONIZE THEM!

Thanks for posting Kat,
Brady
Chat: Computer|Nerd
Twitter: ComputerNerd53

You guys are too right, the other day I got A chain letter, I don’t want a chain letter even in email form, it’s just not cool. As for attachments on emails, if possible don’t attach stuff any bigger than a megabyte, it’s just common sense.

Another thing I could add is if you must send an attachment, zip it before you attach it, it compresses the file and it only takes two or three clicks.

You guys are too right, the other day I got A chain letter, I don’t want a chain letter even in email form, it’s just not cool. As for attachments on emails, if possible don’t attach stuff any bigger than a megabyte, it’s just common sense.

Another thing I could add is if you must send an attachment, zip it before you attach it, it compresses the file and it only takes two or three clicks.

I remember some email I got that said Bill Gates was giving out his fortune. I already knew it was fake but showed it to my mom anyways. She searched on it and came up with a page that listed email frauds.

I responded to my friends forward with the link my mom found.

I feel good now. ;)

When i get a chain letter, i dont even research it. I press one button, that would be delete. i HATE chain letters. Emailed, posted on youtube, or sent over an im client, they are all gonna get deleted. If someone tries to embed a video in email messages, those get the can too. Ill have to try out that checking site sometime though, sounds pretty cool.

and hes PROUD

and hes PROUD

it’s a mac pro (he calls it big mac)

Yeah, it’s very annoying with chainmails and penis enlargement spams ads and conman pretending to be a legit company.
Jose, spammers are like a bad rumor about you or bully that teases you , ignore him long enough and he will get tired and he will stop teasing you, pay him attention and start an argument and he will enjoy to tease you even more, same are the spammers, ignore them or block them, they may leave you alone, if you respond/reply then it might intensify cause they will know that they have your attention and that they can do whatever they feel like.

skip through and delete

i hate this also. also my aunt sends me this stuff as well as my dad i just am gong to make a chain email telling people to stop :)

I completely agree with this post! Thanks so much for showing me Snopes, and I too do not like emails with videos embedded inside.

Great post! I didn’t know that you could post bits of text from the email to check its validity. Thanks for the tips!

The worst of those forwards are those where they go something like you will die at 12AM. I received that once, deleted it, and nothing happened. That is what happened when I was on AOL [damn those brain dead AOLers!] The worst part was when my cousin just got online and forwarded me those things. I told her to stop and she got mad. Now I have to deal with those on Myspace [uugh I HATE MYSPACE!!!], Facebook, and even Youtube. What happened to the land of unicorns and lollipops? Can’t we make the internet like that if we can’t make the real world like that>?

yea, i haven’t gotten many chain letters in a while, but i do feel that this guy is going into it a little too much, i have never replied or done anything with a chain letter besides just deleting it, right then and there, i don’t usually waste time searching on google and finding out if it is true. Even though that does take a second or two it’s still way too much on something that’s basically just junk.

As probably most people, I hate those emails that claim, “You will have good luck for the next five years if you forward this email to at least 10 people in the next 10 minutes”. I also hate the emails that take forever to download because there is a video file attached. Some people just don’t realize there is a service called YouTube available.

Luckily, I rarely get those kinds of emails. Thank for bring that http://www.snopes.com website to our attention, Chris. I will definitely being using it in the future to check the validity of email forwards.

Chris has right SOPT FORWARDING
Problem is just that not geeks forwards, who get this message (I hope)
Do some people think that forwarded mails are funny? Or what?
We don’t just need a spam filter but a forwarded filter to.

same here

I just outright told my friends that chain letters will get them ignored for a VERY long time, so I haven’t had one in months ^^. Most of the chain mail I used to get was “If you don’t send this to 5 friends you’ll never fall in love!”

Ooooh, scary thought.

I agree 100 percent on stopping forwarded e-mails.
Sometimes I’ll get the same e-mail several times.
And mostly from people at their place of work.
C’mon people, I’ve seen all the jokes.

Still, as for the foreseeable future, there will always be scammers claiming to be royalty and millionaires begging for your money with the promise of a quick buck for your kindness.

My own mother has come close to falling for some and it upsets me.

I will admit I had to look into the original “Bill Gates” chain letter back in about ‘01, but since then I’ve had spam filters and I immediately zap any message from a self-claimed great world leader, XD

i also have noticed that people also forward things like u have to forward this on or else or they send things like if u dont respond to this you may have ur account deleted or whatnot.one big forward still going around is the one that yahoo is shutting down ur account if u dont reply to the message and that u would have to pay $10 a month to use the account which i later found out its not true

i also have noticed that people also forward things like u have to forward this on or else or they send things like if u dont respond to this you may have ur account deleted or whatnot.one big forward still going around is the one that yahoo is shutting down ur account if u dont reply to the message and that u would have to pay $10 a month to use the account which i later found out its not true

I just skip through them and delete. I don’t forward them cause it’s a bunch of crap and a waste of everyone’s time involved.

I just skip through them and delete. I don’t forward them cause it’s a bunch of crap and a waste of everyone’s time involved.

I just skip through them and delete. I don’t forward them cause it’s a bunch of crap and a waste of everyone’s time involved.

i’ve been receiving emails about hotmail shutting down like 4 years now and it just got me crazy that i made a chain letter saying it’s all a Haux with the link from BBC sayin it…These emails just Drive me Crazy !!…especially the ones that say a miracle will happen if u press CTRL+ wutever after forwarding to 18 ppl !!

i’ve been receiving emails about hotmail shutting down like 4 years now and it just got me crazy that i made a chain letter saying it’s all a Haux with the link from BBC sayin it…These emails just Drive me Crazy !!…especially the ones that say a miracle will happen if u press CTRL+ wutever after forwarding to 18 ppl !!

i’ve been receiving emails about hotmail shutting down like 4 years now and it just got me crazy that i made a chain letter saying it’s all a Haux with the link from BBC sayin it…These emails just Drive me Crazy !!…especially the ones that say a miracle will happen if u press CTRL+ wutever after forwarding to 18 ppl !!

Great Tips, email forwards are the bane of my inbox I tell everyone dont send me email forwards but they still do. Thanks!

Well rather than even check with Snopes or any other repository of items of these sort, i just delete the mails!!! Why? Because if the person really needed help, they would choose another method, or it would show up on some blog!

These chain mails are very irritating. I have added a filter which will move all mails containing FWD or FW in the subject so that I can scrutinize them later!

Me or my family usually doesn’t get this email forward thing or “scam” like stuff but one time my mother got an email from south African guy who said that he’s from red cross and if you send in this and this amount of money you will save this place, etc. Of course it’s serious but you never might not be sure so i just copied part of it into google and first link i saw was said that it was a scam so yeah, always look out.

I hate all of the people who are stupid enough (or very uneducated in computers) to really sent e-mails like that. I really bugs me when I try to make a comment on a youtube video or a blog, and I see some poor soul posting stuff like, “Copy and paste this message into 7 other videos and press F8 and your crush’s name will appear on your screen!” I don’t know who starts them or why, but I just instantly delete all instances of them from my inbox and report them as spam to the other sites.

Those “add your name” e-mail petitions are so obviously a waste of time. Don’t people understand that the email never ends up the hands of anyone that will actually do anything with it… and that when the petition finally dies… there are 50,000 different versions of it floating around the intarwebs?

I never forward an email before reading it,and I rarelly forward a message in general.I usually mark as spam all the messages refering to things like that

A good rule of thumb for me is that if you have no idea of who sent it, then it is usually fake as a 3 dollar bill. I used to get those all the time from people in my Yahoo email account and it was frustrating to dig through that garbage to find the email from a chick that I wanted to date. Unfortunately, people now use these tactics everywhere, especially Youtube.

I seem to get so many of these that I just ignore them. I do however sometimes find these upsetting when people send these kind of emails that include probably fictional stories about tragedies and human disaster. I think it is not fair on the people who feel forced into these out of guilt. This doesn’t just happen to us tech geeks, and some people just aren’t as internet savy. Is there anyway google could monitor if many of the same email are sent? Are do they have no right?

I deal with these by just ignoring them. It isn’t much of an issue to me, but I really don’t think it’s fair on those less internet savvy as us. People often get guilt tripped into doing participating in these because of the content. I’ve seen more than one of these containing stories of tradegy and pain. Making people do these through guilt is wrong. Is there something Google could do to monitor emails sent with the same content?

I use gmail’s filters to push all forwards into a seperate folder skipping the inbox. I’ll then delete them after a while. thankfully they aren’t as used as they were.

I usually hit http://www.snopes.com and lookup the hoax and fire it back to the sender. They stop sending me the chain mails when I’ve done it enough.

To be honest, I’m not against email forwards at all. I don’t get hundreds of emails a day, so keeping my inbox clean is not a top priority. I’ve created several IMAP folders “Interesting”, “Funny”, etc. and will place forwarded messages in the corresponding folder. However, I can understand how someone like Chris would not benefit from a lot of email forwards.

i hate e-mail forwards and stuff like that it is so annoying i just delete it the secondes i get it. My grandma sends me tons and tons of e-mail forwards.