!!! WARNING !!!
If you receive an email titled I LIKE DOGS, please do not not not open it.
It will wipe your hard drive and send itself to everyone on your contact list.
Send this to everyone you know, so they don't have the same problem!!!

Microsoft has recently bought Yahoo and decided to start charging
for a hotmail or yahoo mail account. The only way to keep your account,
is to send this email on in the next 7 days. If you do not send this email
to at least 10 people, you will need to pay $9.95 per month to keep your email account.

Sound familiar? If you’re an email user, chances are you’ve seen something like this before. A typical fake warning email. There are many many variations, including some that suggest receiving an email or a friend request by a certain person will lead to a similar situation.

The latest one I received was with regards to a phone system. Basically, if someone calls you to tell you that your BT bill is unpaid, BEWAREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE (especially if you’re not actually with BT). The email tells of how the mysterious stranger convinced the emailee that he needed to pay BT for using their service, even though he was with Virgin Media for his phone line. To prove he was official, it says, the caller disabled the customers line.

Now we all know this is complete and utter fiction. If there was a way, for an average Joe to disable peoples phone lines, there are that many mischievious people and utter cunts out there, that hardly anyone would have a phone line to use.

I can only assume this utter panic comes from peoples lack of understanding. In most cases it’s not understanding how emails or computers work well enough, to know what is suggested is impossible or perfectly easilly avoided. In other cases, it’s more specific knowledge, like how a phone system works in the example above. Now I say it’s a lack of understand that causes it, but it all boils down to a lack of common sense.

• If whatever the email says is true, why have you only heard of it through a chain email sent to you by your friend?
• Why are virus checker companies unaware of this new virus, leaving it up to word of mouth to avoid?
• If you forward an email on to 10 friends, and 2 of those friends forward it on, that list of names supposedly “signing” the email gets split into two separate lists right there.
• You’re sending an email out with maybe 200-300 email addresses in it, that it’s been forwarded to and from in the past. All it takes is for this email to be forwarded to the wrong person, and all of those addresses are in the hands of companies that make money from spam email, or phishing attacks.
• The email is a threat. Do this or else. Fair enough the or else is “bad luck for 7 years”, or the risk that “your crush” won’t “phone you at 1 to tell you they feel the same way about you”. Stop negotiating with terrorists, and don’t send the email on!

There are so many reasons why any of these emails are both ridiculous and potentially dangerous. Forward them on if you want, but don’t fucking send them to me!

Now tweet this and send this link to everyone you know, or you will have bad luck for 7 years.

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