Fwd: Fwd: Fwd:...

Do you get sick of your inbox being cluttered by emails that start with these annoying 3 letters:

Fwd:?

It seems like I'm getting more and more of these lately. When email use peaked several years ago, I got tons of forwarded emails. We were all stupid back then and believed them all. But then people wised up and stopped forwarding them. But for some reason, they seem to be back! And here's the new twist: "Snopes verified!" Yeah right! Just because the email says "Snopes verified," you're going to trust it that it actually is verified on snopes.com? I've checked out many of these so called "verified" emails and NONE of them were verified as being true on snopes.com. In fact, snopes.com verifies that they are untrue! It just goes to show that people will believe anything they read. (Are you in fact believing me right now? Ha ha.)

My favorites among the group are the people who need to get $100 million into the US so they're going to send the money to you, a perfect stranger. You get to keep it all, provided that you pay $250 to help get it here. Or there's the one about flashing your headlights at a car who doesn't have theirs on is part of a gang initiation. They're going to come back and murder you if you flash them. I can't tell you how many times I've received that one. I have also received the one about they guy who asks you to help him while you're loading up your car at the mall. Then he kidnaps you. That one scared a lot of people I know personally but it has so many holes in it and is verified as an urban legend.

One of the newer email hoaxes is one where they tell you not to use the remote unlock button for your car. If you do, someone can steal the "code" that comes out of the remote and they can use it to break into your car later. How do these hoaxes get started? I think someone, who thinks they have a sense of humor, decides to make up something totally off the wall that causes you to be inconvenienced (not using your car remote) to see how many people will forward it and believe it.

Also, there's the one about the little girl who licked her hands after using Purell and died of alcohol poisoning. If one would ingest an entire bottle of hand sanitizer, yes, this could be possible. But licking one squirt off their hands will not cause your children to die. Many of my friends have quit using Purell because of this email hoax.

Please people, before you send out your next unbelievable FWD, please verify it on snopes.com to see if it's true. You may just save yourself a lot of embarrassment and your friends a lot of stress!

~she~