Spammer? Me?

Here's a scary thought for you; you might be a spammer and not even know it. Do you get a lot of forwards in your email? You know, the things that say "Forward me to 10 people and you will get everything you ever wished for in life", or, similarly, cute little messages or pictures that have been goodness only knows how many places before they reached your inbox? Of course you do. Forwards are all over the internet. But here's the real question: did you forward them on to the people in your address book? Yes?

SPAMMER! Unsolicited forwards are no different from any other unsolicited email, except in one respect: you usually get them from people you know, which makes it harder to ask them to stop. And when you've recieved an email, the temptation to click the little "Forward" button--especially if it's a cute email!--is pretty tempting. But stop. Don't do it! Many people are annoyed and irritated by forwards, and sending them is, quite frankly, totally rude.

So what can you do if you keep getting forwards you don't want? First of all, send a polite email to everyone in your address book, something along the lines of "Dear Friends, No matter how cute though they are, forwards really annoy me. Please don't include me in the list when you send them." Just sending that email out got rid of about 95% of the forwards that used to show up in my inbox.

So what about people who continue to send you forwards? Sometimes a polite email addressed specifically to them will take care of the problem--just be sure to keep it polite!--and sometimes it won't. Most mail services allow you to use filters; you can, if you want, filter all email from their address into a separate folder and then ignore it or only check it periodically. As an extreme measure, you can block them completely.

Forwards are no better than spam, and people shouldn't have to deal with them. So remember that, next time your finger is poised over that tempting little button!