The biggest problem with this kind of email is people actually take the time to read it, so then they think, "Isn't that nice?" and assume that because they had the time to read their junk email and found it touching or related to it in some sort of way that everyone they know will too. That, or they are just superstitious idiots who think the bad luck fairy is looking over their shoulder and is going to lop off the very finger that is going for that delete key among bringing down many other horrible, terrible, unfortunate plagues for the rest of their rotten, gullible, email-forwarding lives. And then there's the FYI or warning-fearing people who don't know about or don't care that there's quite a few sites out there where they can check the truthfulness of that public service announcement with which they are about to clutter up everyone's mailbox. It's all junk, people! Hell, even the true stuff is junk, because if you need some email to tell you not to open that attachment you weren't expecting, then you probably already have a system crawling with viruses anyway, and the rest of us are smart enough to send that message to the trash bin right along with the warning about it.

Anyone who's been on the Internet as long or longer than I have has seen it all. It might have a different name, disease, location, victim, company, etc. on it, but it's still the same. If it even hints at forwarding itself to people, you can be pretty sure it's e-crap, and most of the people you'd be sending it to don't want it. Do not forward. Do not pass Go. Do not plague us all with another one of those God-forsaken, feel-good messages. We will not read it. We will not even consider it. It will last only as long as our overworked, cramped claw of a finger can reach the delete key.

You know what's even worse? A forwarded message with about a million and one forward/quote/greater-than symbols that cause there to be about three words per line and a message 62 pages long. You might assume I actually look at these messages to know this, and I did at one time do that, but I also have this thing called a preview window that I sometimes use that gives me an eye-searing visual of the offending message. And don't go sending me all kinds of messages telling me how my preview window makes me susceptible to those evil viruses. Our system has never had a virus, and I use the preview all the time. That's because I don't automatically open stupid attachments. I'm pretty good at this Internet thing by now. I think I have the hang of it. I'll happily tempt fate and rely on my trusty backups to save me should some asshole hacker teenager in Finland write something with my name on it.

You see, that's the simple way to protect yourself from those things. It's called a backup. You can use floppy disks (though I wouldn't recommend them at all), CD's, tape drives, or zip drives to copy the files you don't want to lose, then you store them in a safe place should a nasty bug ever get the best of you. These are also good in case of hard drive crash, and I should know, considering we've had three of them in the past year. It's all the bad luck I have from not forwarding emails.

Folks, Spam is not just a canned so-called meat product. It is that stuff you're forwarding to your entire address book. It's not just those emails to lure you to the nearest pornography site or to help you get out of debt or to sell you the latest weight-loss product. Granted, some people like Spam and certain kinds of spammail. I'm not one of them. I dislike Spam, spam and even green eggs and spam.

For those that haven't been on the net long enough to know better, I am more understanding. Everyone has forwarded at least one message to someone when we were just babes in the e-world. I usually give those people two or three graces before I start sending them links to urban legends sites and a polite message saying I know how much they love me, so I don't need all those cute notes telling me so, no matter how many people they need to send it to. Unfortunately, not everyone catches on. I don't know why, and it pisses me off beyond belief. No, it isn't hard to just send the messages to the can, but dammit, it's inconvenient and just plain annoying. My life contains enough of that under the names of telemarketer, road rage driver and apathetic teenage checkout clerk. Get a clue! Go make yourself a batch of $250 cookies, and get away from the computer.

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One Year Ago Today:

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