I received the same email twice this week and I am betting some of you did also. One from a relative and another from a friend of a friend of a friend along with 50+ other people who were copied on it. Now right off you need to think about it. When you get an email with a bunch of other people in it, it must be a joke or a scam. The obvious clue for these two was the following, "This letter is about an opportunity to make an incredible amount of money (CASH !!!)".
Now here is a big lesson for you, very big. When you get emails that you have trouble believing are true, they are most likely not true. They are there for one of several purposes. To get your money, to get you to download spyware, malware, etc., to get your bank account usernames/passwords or to get some foolish rumor started to spread around the world (the latest is a pathetic rumor about the tenth 9/11 ceremonies). Most always it is to cause some disturbance or problem for someone.
With gas prices high, the economy in disrepair, and job worries, the scams increase as the population becomes more uncertain about the future. Do not fall for any of them. I do not care if the email came from your best friend or even your mom, be cautious.
These emails are urban legends, online rumor, hoax or whatever you would like to call them, but "fake" works well for me. Some of these scams started out in the late 1980s and disappeared for a while then came back exactly the same or with slight differences. They weren’t true then and still aren’t, so PLEASE don’t send them on to anyone else when you get them in your inbox.
I know you want to be a good internet citizen and help your friends during the current uncertainties, but give them realities not falsehoods. You might ask, "How do I know if emails are true or not?"
Here’s how. Copy and paste a sentence or at least five or ten words of a suspect email into a search engine — then search. You will find many links to reputable sites which will tell you about the phony. If the email is true or hasn’t been discovered yet, you may not find anything about it, or very little.
For the one I mentioned earlier I searched that one sentence, with quotes around it. Google found over 130 links. If you read them at all you could find that it is a pyramid scheme. Be careful even then because some of the links perpetuated lies to get your money. When in doubt about the truthfulness of an email simply copy, paste, search and check out the results. If nothing shows up it could either be true or a new legend.
I also recommend Snopes.com or About.com although there are other reputable sites out there performing the same legend verifications. Remember, the Nigerian prince is not real and neither is the lawyer who has $100,000,000 for you if you only help him out.
