A lot of chain mails are hoaxes. Some are harmless, but some could be potentially dangerous by telling you to do things that you shouldn’t be. Or by telling you to do pointless things while you should be getting help for medical emergencies or similar.

So I implore you to stop sending me chain mails. I don’t want to start filtering your mails straight to my trash folder. Look up the stuff on Snopes.com and About.com’s urban legends site before you click on “Forward”.

A healthy cynicism goes a long way.

Another thing, stop clicking on e-mail attachments even if they may seem to have come from someone you know. Especially when the subject says:

  • “Hey check this out!” or,
  • “I love you!” or,
  • “Naked Anna Kournikova pic!”.

No clicking on “.docs”, “.jpgs”, “.exes”, “.bat”, or “.scrs” either. If you wanna be certain, email the person back and ask him or her if they’d sent something to you.

If they didn’t, tell them to update their anti-virus programs quick smart.

And finally, no banks or credit-card companies would ever send you an email asking you to update your passwords, or to verify that you are who are you by entering said password. If you are gullible enough to click on a phish-y link, look at the site carefully. Does it look dodgy? If it does, then it’s dodgy!

If you are really not sure because the site looked kinda real, then call your bank or credit-card company’s hotline and ask about the emails. Chances are, they never sent out one.

And ARGH….. your penises would not get larger, you don’t need viagra off the net, and there’s no millions of dollars waiting for you in Nigeria! And you won’t earn money “working at home” – pyramid schemes are EVIL!

How do you know when something is a pyramid scheme? When you make money by recruiting more ppl into the scheme instead of actually selling anything real.

*phew* There. I hope I answered all your questions.

Just because I solve computer problems for a living, it doesn’t mean I’d want to do it in my spare time for FREE. Unless of course you provide me food or sex. Big Big Bonus if you do both. :P