Better yet – if she did have her computer checked, and there was in fact a virus, or a collection of them. Is this her home or work computer? Because, if it’s her own PC, it wouldn’t surprise me if she has no idea how to safeguard it against worms, viruses, Trojan horses, and so forth.
[nitpick]
Heh. I took “to go down” as meaning “to go over, to be received” rather than expressing any literal sense of fart-travel direction. Alternative wording: to be as popular as a fart in…
[/nitpick]
Y’know what I do to people who send me spam crap (chain letters, forward-this-for-$1,000, check out this weird pic and story, etc).
I go to Snopes, find the article about that Email (I do love the Inboxer Rebellion section), and reply with the the c&p article and web address.
I tend to only get about two of those kinds of Emails from any one person. Maybe they get tired of someone telling them they’d been duped.
Seems to work, tho.
Same problem here.
Bro and SIL are the dumbest people when it comes to the internet, even though both are smart in any other possible way. Their computers (they have a desktop and a laptop) are out of service 6 out of any 10 days, always down with one virus or the other. They used to send me all the lame stuff that they got from other lame surfers (animation of a rose blooming, stupid poem, feel-good message, 10 zillion gigabytes, 10 days to download on DSL), and that was if I was lucky: 50% of their emails were infected.
We got to a point where I just decided to block them, and I told them. And I told them why, in the nicest possible way. They were a bit offended, but I can’t afford having my computer screwed by some virus sent cluelessly by them too.
They never did, however, send me any spam. So I guess you win. 
WHAT KIND OF SPAM IS SHE SENDING!? Yes, I was yelling. I’ve been reading this whole thread with bated breath, hoping to find out exactly what spam she’s been forwarding. Penis enlargement pills? Low cost mortgages? What? I’m dying over here. Tell us!
And speaking of people who type in all caps…A couple of years ago, my father finally relented and agreed to use email. He’s been using computers for 20+ years, so it wasn’t that he was uncomfortable with computers. (He’s an accountant, so he’s been using Lotus and Quicken and all pretty much since day one.) I guess he’s just an ol’ curmudgeon.
Anyway, I finally got him to send me a message, and it was in all caps. So, I tried to explain to him that that was considered yelling, and wasn’t polite. He thought that was ridiculous, but I told him that that’s just the way things are, so he shouldn’t do it. That, he accepted. But…unfortunately, that just made him even more reluctant to send messages than he already was. He apparently reads his email, but he just won’t send any. I’ll send him an email, and he’ll respond by calling me on the phone.
Typical conversation:
Ring ring ring
Me: Hello?
Pop: No.
Me: Excuse me?
Pop: No.
Me: What do you mean, “no?”
Pop: That’s the answer.
Me: The answer to what?
Pop: The answer to the question.
Me: What question!?
Pop: The question that you asked me.
Me: I didn’t ask you anything.
Pop: Yes you did.
Me: When did I ask you a question?
Pop: In the email that you sent me. You asked if I had received the package that you sent me.
Me: Ohh! That question! Why didn’t you just reply to my email?
Pop: This way is easier.
I Cant Understand Why People Dislike Caps. I Find Them Easier To Read.
The above was written in all capitals. Somehow it turned out like that…
This post has been CAPITALIZED by the CAPITALIZER!!!
My Mum sends me a daily ration of jokes and amusing forwards which to be fair I actually mainly fined funny but she does have an annoying habit of sending me stupid chain emails and those annoying goodwill messages with a cutesy story about the cat with cancer that donated blood to his haemophilic owner for example. But the most insidious of her crimes is forwarding me stuff that I just forwarded to her! She does this all the time and it drives me nuts but I figure she does some good work with the filthy jokes so I let it slide…
Ooh, fancy meeting you here! 
Green Bean, the spam in question is not of the penis enlargement variety, I would concede honourable defeat to anyone who was on the receiving end of that. It’s local spam, on the lines of ‘Special offer at Taco Bell’ or ‘25% off this week at Benetton’.
Thank you! That’s still awful! (Though it would be damned funny if she was sending you multiple breast enlargement ads. “Ya trying to tell me something, sis?”)
Ya trying to tell me something?
I have a friend who does this (in addition to several of the OP’s original complaints about her SIL). She likes to send fancy script, different colors, etc—because it looks “pretty”. It’s not so pretty when it’s causing me a migraine to try to read it, thank you very much.
I’m not sure if I find all caps or no caps more annoying. That’ll trouble me all night now.
Whatever the ‘virus’ that causes this condition is, there is no known cure. I have her on block sender, but this morning a couple more forwarded spams from her were gracing my junk folders.
Do I give up now, or adopt another tactic, like e-mailing her entire list of recipients? I will definitely ask her whether she got the ‘virus’ sorted out next time I talk to her.
Honourable mention for a friend of my husband who lives in the US who forwarded him his GWB supporters campaign newsletter, even though:
I hope this ‘friend’ doesn’t work in marketing. Talk about abysmal targeting…
What are you using for blocking her? Different programs may work different ways.
CandidGamera, that’s not the problem now. I have her on block and the messages she sends go to the junk folder. That’s fine. I can check to see whether they are worth looking at, but don’t have to actively zap them out of my inbox.
Re-reading my post I can see why you thought I was asking why this was happening.
I just wish she would realise what she’s doing and stop inflicting the rest of her address book with forwarded spam that we all get anyway. Clearly my tactics so far have not worked.
Yeah, I wasn’t reading carefully enough. Short of sitting down with her and having a long face-to-face talk with her, you could try to contact other folks on her list … just the ones you know, and asking if that bothers them. They may not care about the spam.
Of course, the mischievous imp in me has suggested all along that you just find the hundred niftiest websites you can each day and email links to her… one at a time.
He’s a baaaad imp.
I think you ought to save up all your physical junk mail and advertising flyers, and once or twice a week, mail it all to her in a big envelope. Maybe you can include all the stuff you and your husband receive at your offices, too. Should make quite an impressive package, and worth the cost of postage to make your point.
If you give me her email address, I can forward all the viruses and spam I receive every day to her. No, that probably wouldn’t work, cause she’d just forward them on to you again.
Courese, if you’re serious about not getting email from her, you can always change your address and tell everyone but her.
I like the junkmail suggestion, pugluvr, but where we live there is very little of it.
OTOH,
That’s certainly a thought, featherlou. Allow me to take it a step further. I could post her e-mail address with a request that everyone bombard it with their spam on a message board read by ‘millions’, sit back and watch the fun unfold.
At a very modest estimate we all get an average of 10 spam e-mails a day. Even with a response rate of 0.01% from dopers that should put her account under impossible strain for a day or two (it’s a hotmail account ). Then I won’t have to go to the trouble of changing my addresses, because she will have been effectively disarmed and in no position to forward the spam.
See, CandidGamera, you aren’t the only one with a mischievous imp.
Then again, a quiet word might do the trick. Is there a smiley with a halo?