Junk Spam eMail, and well meaning friends

What is it about girlfriends? I love my girlfriends, you know. They're a seriously well meaning bunch of friends. For someone whose first experience of having girlfriends in any kind of quantity began less than 10 years ago, I'm revelling in the knowledge that I have a bunch of mates I can count on for support and friendship. Loads of them. It helps that I've met them all in the sorts of situations in which mums usually find themselves - I'm hardly likely to find a Carrie, Samantha, Miranda or a Charlotte amongst them (although we can all dream...)

But I've got to say - Oh my goodness - they are the most gullible bunch of mail-forwarders it's possible to find in the whole of the known universe!

I read an article recently that most email hoaxes are aimed at women. I'm not talking about the Nigerian Scam, or the other Phishing attempts. I'm talking about the ones which don't seem to achieve anything for the originator except that his ruddy stupid email gets forwarded round the world 15 million times.

I got two this morning, both from wonderful lady friends.

1. The Bill Gates is giving all his money away hoax, and every time you forward this email you'll get a cheque for $244, and ever time anyone to whom you forward the email forwards it, you'll get $243 etc.
2. The Red Arrows have been banned from performing in the 2012 London Olympics because they're deemed "Too British!"

I'm not going to put their names down, because I love them both so much, but man! Can neither of these ladies operate Google? It's pretty simple - it took me less than 5 minutes to establish that both of these are hoaxes. Indeed, the Bill Gates story has been circulating for 10 years. Yes, I did say 10 YEARS!!!

I was actually rather pleased to find, from an RAF blog, that the Red Arrows story is not true.

Is it that I'm just particularly cynical? Is it that, as a person who's on the computer a lot of the time I'm in more peoples address books. Or is it simply that ladies care more?

The article suggested that email hoaxes are targeted at women because they can rest sure in the knowledge that women will faithfully pass them on. Remember the one with the subject of Slow Dance, allegedly written by a 9-year old dying from cancer? Actually it was written by one David L. Weatherford, who may look like the original model for The Joy of Sex, but is, in fact, a Child psychologist. I do feel that, despite the fact that his site is horribly designed and makes you nauseous to view it, he deserves the credit of having written this poem.

The article goes on to say that women pass these on because they're more easily scared, and it's easy to prey on our weaknesses - crying babies, children dying, warnings about attacks on other women. OK - I get this, I really do. But am I the ONLY woman on the planet who requires verification? Proof? At least two other sources showing the information, preferably sources like the BBC or something - that's what I want before I believe it.

The fact is that it took me just seconds, after typing in "Bill Gates giving away fortune" to find any number of sites which informed me that not only is this a hoax, there's nothing in the underlying code of the email which would enable the message to be tracked back to you at all.

There are a number of wonderful sites out there whose sole purpose is to keep one informed of the increasing slew of stupid hoax emails, but most of the women in my circle of friends seem oblivious to the help available on the internet. They blindly accept the information presented to them, which has been forwarded numerous times, and just as blindly forward it to their entire address books. These ladies are clearly at risk every time an email says "Please forward this to everyone in your address book - I'd rather get this warning multiple times than not at all.", or "A cardiologist says If everyone who gets this mail sends it to 10 people, you can bet that we'll save at least one life."

Women appear to be more vulnerable to the nauseating, cutesy emails which tell you why you'll be their friend forever (pass me the bucket, please!), annotated by pictures of cute cats, dogs, hamsters and the like. There's a site for you, ladies! These I appreciate more, although there are all too many of them which exhort me to "Return this to me, if you don't I'll know why!", a nasty form of blackmail, which says "If you don't send this horrible, cutesy garbage straight back to me, I wont be your friend any more." What?! Good god - the least you could do is to change the subject... Oh no - you got me started. Why, for the love of Mike, can people not take out all the previous forwarding information? It seriously can't be because they want to credit previous posters. I suppose it's possible that they don't want the buck to stop at them if people like me take exception and shoot back a caustic response!

So - what can we do about these horrible emails. My efforts at education have been received badly - "So it's a fake - whoop te do! I don't care" from one chap who ended up in the cc: field when I tried to inform my friend about the Slow Dance hoax. It turns out you need to be careful if using googlemail, because it will cc: all the people to whom your friend originally forwarded the mail, if you try to reply. Thankfully the response from my friend was rather more measured.

The message is clear - Please check the veracity of the information you are forwarding.