Moriarty Spams Again

We've all received them in our email. They usually come to us from a
well-intentioned but slightly gullible friend or family member. Usually
they include numerous forwarding headers that include comments like: "I
checked it out, and it's for real!".

Of course nobody checked it out, and of course it isn't real, and of
COURSE it is 300K because of the 5 million headers and numerous
re-forwards, and of course it p|sses you off to get it in your mail.
But there it is. Either that or you don't recognize it, and in your
good-hearted way, you pass it on to everybody in your address
book.

Can we talk? Seriously, can we?

LET'S LEARN TO IDENTIFY AND DEBUNK THE URBAN LEGENDS

There are many MANY Urban Legends circulating via email as I type this.
They range from the internet email tax hoax to the Jessica Mydek cancer
story to Bill Gates' Email Tracker to the Neil Armstrong and his
neighbor Mr. Gorsky tale. Every now and then, a 'new' UL appears which
is a rehashing of an older one, with the names changed or one or two
minor details flipped around. How to recognize a UL when it
arrives?

Urban Legends are usually forwarded and reforwarded. By the time they
reach you, they are immense and take a month to download via modem.
They contain hundreds of forwarding headers, giving you a wonderful
list of emails to spam to if you should ever enter into a Make Money
Fast pyramid scheme. The subject line usually looks like:
(fwd)(fwd)(fwd)(fwd)(fwd)(fwd)(fwd) and etc, ad nauseum, ad
infinitum.

Within the forwarding headers, you will almost always find at least one
comment from one of the people who forwarded it before it reached you
that will say something along the lines of: "My mother's best friend's
dog checked this out and it's TRUE!" This is almost always a person you
have never met, never heard of, and are only linked to because of a
strange chain of email forwards from friend to acquaintance to mother's
best friend's dog to cousin to co-worker to friend again and finally to
you.

If you do not know Gullible1@aol.com's mother's best friend's dog, why
would you take Gullible1's word for it that the pooch checked it out?
If you got an email telling you that it was now legal to import cocaine
from Columbia, would you rush off to invest your life savings, all on
the 'word' of somebody you have never heard of? Or would you
investigate a bit further before deciding you want to spend the rest of
your life in a Columbian prison with a big hairy guy named Maria Jesus
who calls you his little "Mamacita"?

ULs often sound like the niftiest thing since sliced bread. "The first
1000 email addresses that this is forwarded by will get a free
computer, a vacation at Disneyland, and 250 free G-strings from
Victoria's Secret. My uncle's father's boyfriend's dildo checked it out
and it's true!"

These ones are very easy to debunk. Visit the websites of the companies
mentioned. Dig through their site map or site search to locate
information on this great offer. If it is genuine, you will find
information about it there. If it isn't genuine, you will often find a
statement to that effect there as well. For example, visiting
www.microsoft.com and searching for 'email hoax' will bring you to a
column written by Gates in which he discusses the hoax that was
perpetrated in Microsoft's name. (I will not mention here that anything
that gives Gates hemmorhoids is my idea of a Good Thing (tm)).

ULs often reach out and grab you by the heart-strings, making you feel
and care and want to do something. "Jessica Mydek has cancer, for every
person you forward this to, the American Cancer Society will donate 3
cents to cancer research", "Craig Shergold has a fatal brain tumor and
wants to get into the Guiness Book for having more greeting cards than
anybody else on the planet ever", "I am working on a school project for
extra credit so that I don't get held back in 4th grade this year,
please help me out by forwarding this".

Some of these are easier to debunk than others. A visit to
www.cancer.org will show you the American Cancer Society's website.
Plug in MYDEK into the search box and hit go. You will find their
commentary about this UL there. Additionally, you can use common sense
on this one. Why would an organization dedicated to cancer research
donate money for the same? They are trying to raise money for it, not
give it away to other organizations. Simple brainwork.

The Craig Shergold thing was very true - in 1989. By 1991, Craig's
tumor had been successfully removed and he had entered the Guiness book
with 33 million get well cards to his credit. In the last eleven years
that number has swelled to over 200 million. The swamp of mail to
Shergold's home in England is so immense that the postal service there
has actually had to give the Shergold's their own postal code. Craig
wishes people would STOP sending him cards. Variants on this UL have
caused some families to have to move and leave no forwarding address,
other people to be forced to change their telephone numbers, and so on.
This UL is a life-wrecker.

The 'please help me with a school project' ones are sometimes true and
sometimes not true, a 50-50 tossup. Figuring out which ones are true
and which ones aren't is impossible. But a good thing to keep in mind
is that these ones, when false, are generally started by a malicious
person out to swamp another human being's email box and cause them
extra time with their online service (which can cost them money), or
even cause them to lose their account due to mail server crashes from
trying to handle the email load. When in doubt (if you do not
personally know the person requesting assistance) do not pass this one
on. Don't take my grandfather's girlfriend's lesbian lover's word for
it.

LET'S EDUCATE OUR WELL INTENTIONED FRIENDS AND FAMILY

The most important thing to do when you get a UL via email, almost more
important than not passing it on, is to email the person who sent it to
you and tell them the facts of the case. You can research pretty much
any UL at www.snopes.com for yourself, then paste the URL of the actual
UL debunking to your friend or mother or aunt's mother's cat, and tell
them: "If it sounds too nifty or scary to be true, you are being
suckered, check snopes.com before you pass anything on!" You can also
suggest nicely to them that they let everybody they forwarded the UL to
know that they have learned that it was not a true thing, and ask that
those who have not already forwarded it please not do so.

IN CLOSING

When dealing with ULs and multiply forwarded emails, always take the
skeptical approach. Check it out for yourself, check it out thoroughly.
Or some day, Maria Jesus may be kissing you and calling you
"Mamacita".