The reason I ask is last night I got one of those scare emails from a friend. It was one of those with an unverified number of women dying, this one from sniffing perfume samples that came in the mail, and warning people to throw in the garbage any free samples they receive. Then it went on to say that this may be the new terrorist attack and that the news wouldn’t broadcast it for fear of giving terrorists ideas! Like they need help from the news to find ways of terrorizing people.
I figured it was garbage however there was a snail mail address and email at the bottom. I figured “What the Heck? Maybe some poor schmoe has had his email address stolen. And if so this person should know about what is being said with his name attached.” I emailed the address and sent the letter back. No surprise it bounced. So I sent out my finding to everyone who had also received this email.
About 10 minutes later I got a huffy email back from one woman. She seemed mostly upset that she got an email from a gaspSTRANGER!
I was like “WTF?” you never got spam. What I wouldn’t PAY for that email account!
She also raved on about how that email had gone into her trash and now I had SENT IT BACK TO HER! Ummm sorry honey, forgive me for giving a shit enough to try to verify a rumor and then informing everyone of its content.
I mean jeez email its another form of communication and for most people just another high tech toy…
Why would you do that? Reply To All just means everyone gets the same piece of trash twice. If you’re going to bother debunking the crap that gets emailed to you, only reply to the sender. I do try to point out to people that they’re passing on a hoax, but they usually get offended or question the legitimacy of Snopes (why do they believe the incredible stories that get sent to them, but doubt the site that points out the logical inconsistancies?). This reaction is only magnified if you Reply To All and make them look stupid in front of their friends, aquaintances and collegues. In the rare cases where you reply to someone who wants to learn, they will usually email their friends themselves and update them on the situation, and no one gets antsy about recieving email from strangers.
And I’d be cranky if I got your email too - not just because you were a stranger hassling me about something I’d already consigned to the trash, but because my stupid friend had failed to BCC, meaning that goodness-only-knows-who was going to end up with my email address. I had a six month long problem with a guy sending me obscene jokes because he Replied To All with “Add Everyone I Reply To Into My Address Book” ticked, and then sent everything that came his way to everyone in the address book. I had to threaten to report him to his ISP to make him stop sending me his crap. Now my friends are asked to be sensible about what they send me, and to BCC whenever possible.
cazzle is correct. Your email should only have been sent to the original sender and anyone on the list who you know personally and you know would appreciate your email.
cazzle is correct. Your email should only have been sent to the original sender and anyone on the list who you know personally and you know would appreciate your email.
I wish I knew. I guess they are just trying to defend their own gullibility. “I’m not the only one who believes everything I read on the internet, you unquestioningly swallow everything that snopes guy says. How do you know he’s not jerking you around, too, unless you research it all yourself?”
I do hit “Reply All” when I debunk these sometimes, but I freely admit, it is purely out of the malicous intent of embarassing the person as much as possible (if they deserve it, and are frequent offenders).
I hit “Reply All” because I’m trying to train the one person who continues to send me this crap to for god’s sake, stop it. Asking her to stop didn’t work, replying to just her to point out it’s not true didn’t work, so perhaps continuously embarrassing her by showing all her friends she’s sending them crap might work.
I have used “reply all” for junk like this one time. It was someone who had gotten my e-mail from an e-mail that a friend sent out. This person took to sending at least 30 crap e-mails a week. Rather than simply send them to my deleted items folder, I used reply all for one with the message “who are you and why do you keep sending me this crap?”.
A bunch of other people who were getting these e-mails replied to me using the reply all funtion and said they weren’t sending them, but they wished it would stop too.
I never got another e-mail from that person.
