Don't Create Your Own Bad Press

Ever seen something like this in your inbox before?

I hear we are going to hit close to $3.00 a gallon by the summer. Want gasoline prices to come down? We need to take some intelligent, united action. This makes MUCH MORE SENSE than the "don't buy gas on a certain day" campaign that was going around last April or May! The oil companies just laughed at that because they knew we wouldn't continue to "hurt" ourselves by refusing to buy gas.
Here's the idea: For the rest of this year, DON'T purchase ANY gasoline from the two biggest companies (which now are one), EXXON and MOBIL. If they are not selling any gas, they will be inclined to reduce their prices. If they reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit. But to have an impact, we need to reach literally millions of Exxon and Mobil gas buyers.
I am sending this note to about thirty people. If each of you send it to at least ten more (30 x 10 = 300) ... and those 300 send it to at least ten more (300 x 10 = 3,000)...and so on, by the time the message reaches the sixth generation of people, we will have reached over THREE MILLION consumers! If those three million get excited and pass this on to ten friends each, then 30 million people will have been contacted!
If it goes one level further, you guessed it..... THREE HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE!!!
How long would all that take? If each of us sends this email out to ten
more people within one day of receipt, all 300 MILLION people could conceivably be contacted within the next 8 days!!! I'll bet you I didn't think you and I had that much potential, did you! Acting together we can make a difference.

We have all gotten these types of emails.

They announce some monumental event that you can't believe you missed on the morning news, and then prompt you to forward the message to as many people as you can so you can save a life, get a petition to the government, or lower gas prices, etc. The truth is that most of these emails are tall tales commonly referred to as "email hoaxes". Email hoaxes may even warn of a "serious virus" and tell you to delete an important system file from your computer.

As people in an industry of service, we want to help people...clients...or potential clients. So we forward these emails to our entire address book, because we think, "hey, who wouldn't want to know what they can do to help lower gas prices", right? What ends up happening is that you just gave yourself your own bad press. You did not investigate the truth of the claim on any of the popular email hoax verification websites, you just forwarded it along. And, if you didn't BCC (blind carbon copy) everyone, then your entire address book is now being forwarded to millions of others who continue to pass the message along.

What's the harm, really? Well, aside from clogging email servers with these messages, and increasing the cost of managing email, you increase the risk to your computer, and the computers of others. The risk becomes a little more clear when we realize that the majority of these emails originate from spammers trying to get the message around and back to them enough that they will be able to gather some good email addresses to which they can send their junk email. Each time you hit that forward button, you are helping them win and clogging your own inbox!
This is why using the BCC option is important whenever you send any email. Protect your family, friends, colleagues, and clients from more SPAM by simply deleting the email. As a courtesy, you may first want to reply to the person who sent it to you and refer them to an email hoax verification website such as Snopes.com (if you've never been, it is a MUST VISIT website that can shed some light on many false beliefs).
Other risks include the ability for people to begin attaching viruses to the emails. So, your "virus warning" could become a virus email itself. Think about that scenario..."my friend sent me an email that crashed my entire system...". You don't want to be that friend!

So, how can you be sure an email is a hoax? The first step is to be on the lookout for these characteristics:

• The email says, "This is not a chain letter" or "This is not a hoax"
• The email says to send it to "everyone you know" or to "as many people as possible"
• The email contains technical sounding language to sound more credible
• The author of the email identifies him/herself as a leader of a foreign country or part of the leader's family or staff
• The author of the email claims that the original email was sent to them by someone who works for the company involved or is a lawyer or doctor or some professional who supposedly "backs" whatever is said in the email
  

The easiest way to check on a hoax if you are unsure is to visit a site like Snopes.com and search for the subject matter of the email. Another great site is Symantec.com where you can see a list of hoaxes collected by email subject line.

So, the next time you get an email promising $800 from Microsoft for forwarding an email, think twice and use the delete button instead of the forward button. The people in your address book will be happy you did!