Friends and Family Sending Bogus Emails

My mother and sister's used to send me 10-20 of those things a day.

With one sister (who sent most of them) I sent her teh snopes pages a couple of time telling her they were bogus (they were usually virus warnings) and asked her to stop sending them to me several times. She never listened and eventually I hit the "Reply to all" button and fired off a "Why do you keep sending me this bull$hit?" reply. I haven't gotten another one since.

With my mother, I just stopped responding to her emails. After 2 months or so she called to ask if everything was ok. I told her things were fine and asked why she was concerned. She said that she had sent several emails asking me questions but I hadn't replied to her. I told her that I had my email setup to send all of her stuff to the trash box automatically since they were always stupid stuff that had been forwarded 30 times. She hasn't sent me another one of them since and she complained to my other siblings about what I had done so they all stopped too.

I never get any of that kind of junk any more.

When I get those emails, I show up to the offender's house with a flame thrower and a few gallons of gasoline.

But the gas is getting a little expensive today for such activities!!!! LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!!!!

I usually send people the specific Snoops link with a message like: Thanks for thinking of me, but I don't want you to be embarrassed by continuing to publicize silly things like this, so please check out future fact or fabrications on this site...

Snopes, That's Snopes, Madame.




Funny, that reminds me. My father had a fair sized scar on his hand from a shark bite gotten somewhere in a fishing boat off of northern california in the early 1900's, guessing maybe in the early twenties. I remember specifically that the shark was newly dead but had residual nerve action or some such. (My dad went to med school and wasn't apt to make this up, and I'm guessing his brother, a later Matson Lines captain was with him at the time.)

I have lost at least one emailing friend whom I still somewhat like, due to my insistence on not getting emails with my name and addy on some large list. So, let's say it's possible your aunt would be offended.

I vote for Snopes when ever possible.

I get such crap from my sister's housemate. He sent me a youtube link regarding Jeriamah Wright. This time I answered him. I said I couldn't give up the 20 - 45 minutes I need to download a video. I also told him I had access to more political & religeous propaganda than he'd ever thought of, though I didn't mention a2k. Two days later, he sends me the same link, with some sentiment regarding the need for god in my life. By way of returning the respect he was showing me, I blocked his address.

Well, hey, the next important message from would have been the first, anyway.

Good line, Roger.

I responded to one my M-I-L sent to the whole email list -- it was alarmist (and false) so I wanted to be sure people knew ASAP. I was super-nice about it but got guff from a B-I-L, and saw his point. Have been more careful since.

My dad's wife just sent a scare email (about getting cancer from bottled water left in cars) that someone (don't know the person) replied-all to, pointing out that it was false and asking her to check things before sending (she's done this before). It was 1,000 times ruder than mine but it reinforced that it's best to reply to just the sender, and let that person send out a correction.

(GW, teasing, know that was a typo.)

Actually, more of a brain burp combined with my Mrs. Malaprop syndrome.

I've used greenwitch's tact for my mother...... I suppose that neither of my aunts emails was alarmist. But there have been small rifts in the family about abortion rights and life in the womb (this story isn't about that or really pertaining, but it lends toward that kind of discourse).

Malaprop, but do you remember the play? I don't, but that was one of my favorite areas of eng.lit., in contrast to my real life of propping up mals.

Well, I wasn't around for the original debut, but I've seen my share of high school productions.

http://www.able2know.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=47252

There was a time that I was considering homicide, or at the least, major mayhem!

I wouldn't bother sending out correctional emails: it serves no purpose. However, if the topic comes up in a conversation then explain it away to your heart's content. If you are annoyed by getting these emails then talk to the person. If they keep sending them then block that person. Simple enough.

Sometimes I reply to the sender; sometimes to the complete recipient list; and sometimes do nothing.

If I reply, I point out the hoax and advise that all the person sending the e-mail is doing is taking up bandwidth and scaring the gullible. I provide information on how to verify their information before sending it.

They usually stop pretty quickly.

This is all really interesting to me.

The question is not how to shut someone off, but how to deal with, a friend or relative, let's say, relatively close ones, re emails.

As it happens, among the people whom I care about is my cousin, the right wing fanatic. She is that, but that's not how I think of her mainly , I see her with the basketball... and other situations.




I just recently flamed my cousin for a post, one of her expurgative emails, with hers back, something about people sucking the system, with added cartoons.


Does love die on disagreement? Or exist on agreement. Surely -- to me -- no.

When someone sends a silly chain mail that's one social gaffe, but a small one.

When someone sends any mass mailing with your address visible to the other recipients it is a larger social gaffe.

In any case, I like to send a polite heads up. Hell, most people went through a phase like that on the internet when they were emailing all the digital contacts they had with all this newfangled digital stuff they found while often not really realizing that if they, in their technical ineptitude have stumbled across it that means everyone else has already heard it or is about to hear it from some other new internet user.

When it's a false email claim I usually like to send a simple link to a site that does a good job explaining it.

When it's a chain email I will privately ask them to not do that with my address again and if they fail to do so I will reply all (an internet gaffe unto itself unless you are fighting the good fight against the much more stupid email-the-contact-book gaffe) with a short explanation of how the spam is harming the productivity of others.

When possible, I like to simply provide links to nice polite sites explaining basic email etiquette. Most people doing this have no idea that they are being rude, and that it's not just a personal issue I have with them but akin to commonly known rudeness like calling someone late at night.

There are quite a few sites that do a good job at organizing basic etiquette in email use, here are some very basics:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA012054101033.aspx