This file includes poems, jokes, chain letters, forwarded emails, hoaxes etc. Email as a method of Communication is in a separate file. Also see Computer Humor, Internet, Computer Pages, Acronyms and Smilies and Modern Technology.

SPAM prevention tip

There are programs that search the internet to gather email addresses from website, message boards and chat rooms. You can write you email address in such a way to help prevent that. For example, instead of writing "denny@davis.name", you could write "denny AT davis DOT name" or "denny nospam@nospam davis.name". If you want people on the board to be able to email you, you may have to explain how to convert it.

Irish Computer Virus

Dear Receiver,
You have just received an Irish Virus.
We are not so technologically advanced in Ireland so this is a Manual Virus.
Please delete all the files on your hard disk yourself and send this mail to everyone you know.
That'd be grand.
Thanx.

Cute Signature

No trees were destroyed in the sending of this message, but a significant number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.

Signs Someone Else is Using Your Email Account

• An 18-wheeler from Amazon just backed into your driveway.
• One Secret Service agent is sitting on your head while another is slapping cuffs on you.
• You are served with a search warrant for all those porn pics that keep arriving in your email box.
• When you log on, your computer says "You've got lawsuits!"
• You're suddenly getting more Spam than the Hormel outlet store.
• Sotheby's says the Rembrandt is yours and you now owe them $71,000,000.
• Your wife calls you at the office to report that Pogdi, your Pakistani mail-order bride, has arrived.
• You receive this email: "The resistance welcomes your involvement. Your contact information has been forwarded to a local insurgent who will bring supplies and reinforcements to you immediately."

This is Creepy!

Think of a letter between A and W.

Repeat it out loud as you scroll down.

Think of an animal that begins with that letter.

Repeat it out loud as you scroll down.

Think of a person's name that begins with the last letter in the animals name.

Repeat it out loud as you scroll down.

Now count out the letters in that name on the fingers of the hand you are not using to scroll down
Take the hand you counted with and hold it out in front of you at face level

Look at your palm very closely and notice the lines in your hand
Do the lines take the form of the first letter in the persons name?

Of course not . . .

Now smack yourself in the head, get a life, and quit playing stupid e-mail games!

Chain Letters

I recently received your chain letter. Over 1,000 people have sent me chain letters, and every one of them has died within six months, probably from the 'Chain Letter Sender's Curse'. You will probably die soon if you experience any of the following symptoms:

1) Tiredness at bedtime,
2) Hunger just before lunch,
3) Inability to remember your license plate number, or
4) Stupidity

THE SEVEN BASIC TYPES OF CHAIN LETTERS:

CHAIN LETTER TYPE 1:

(scroll down)

Make a wish!!!

Really, go on and make one!!!

Oh please . . . They'll never go out with you!!!

Wish something else!!!

Not that, you moron!!!

Something else! Quick!!!

Is your finger getting tired yet?

STOP!!!!

Wasn't that fun? Hope you made a great wish.

Now, to make you feel guilty, here's what I'll do. First of all, if you don't send this to 5096 people in the next 5 seconds, you will be attacked by a mad goat and then thrown off a high building into a pile of manure.
It's true! Because, you know, THIS letter isn't like all of those fake ones, THIS one is TRUE!!
Really!!! Here's how it goes:
*Send this to 1 person: One person will be mad at you for sending them a stupid chain letter.
*Send this to 2-5 people: 2-5 people will be mad at you for sending them a stupid chain letter.
*5-10 people: 5-10 people will be mad at you for sending them a stupid chain letter.
*10-20 people: 10-20 people will be mad at you for sending them a stupid chain letter.
*20 to 674,951 people: 20 to 674, 951 people will be mad at you for sending them a stupid chain letter.
Thanks!!!! Good Luck!!!

CHAIN LETTER TYPE 2:

Hello, and thank you for reading this letter. You see, there is a starving little boy in Baklaliviatatlaglooshen who has no arms, no legs, no parents, and no goats. This little boy's life could be saved, because for every time you pass this on, a dollar will be donated to the Little Starving Legless Armless Goatless Boy from Baklaliviatatlaglooshen Fund. Remember, we have no way of counting letters sent and this is all bull. So go on, reach out.
Send this to 5 people in the next 47 seconds. Oh, and a reminder - if you accidentally send this to 4 or six people, you will die instantly.
Thanks again!!

CHAIN LETTER TYPE 3:

Hi there!! This chain letter has been in existence since 1897.
This is absolutely incredible because there was no email then and probably not as many little 8-year-olds writing chain letters. So this is how it works.
Pass this on to 15,067 people in the next seven minutes or something horrible will happen to you like:

Stupid Horror Story #1
Miranda Pinsley was walking home from school on Saturday. She had recently received this letter and ignored it. She then tripped in a crack in the sidewalk, fell into the sewer, was gushed down a drainpipe in a flood of poopie, and went flying out over a waterfall. Not only did she smell nasty, she died. This Could Happen to You!!!

Stupid Horror Story #2
Dexter Bip, a 13-year-old boy, got a chain letter in his mail and ignored it. Later that day, he was hit by a car and so was his girlfriend.
They both died. Their families were so upset that everyone related to them (even by marriage) went crazy and spent the rest of their miserable lives in an institution. This Could Happen to You!!!
Remember, you could end up like Pinsley and Bip did. Just send this letter to all of your loser friends, and everything will be OK.

CHAIN LETTER TYPE 4:

As if you care, here is a poem that I wrote. Send it to every one of your friends.
Friends
A friend is someone who is always at your side
A friend is someone who likes you even though you're disgustingly ugly
A friend is someone who cleans up for you after you've soiled yourself
A friend is someone who stays with you all night while you cry about your loser life
A friend is someone who pretends they like you when they really think you should be attacked by a mad goat and then thrown in a pile of manure
A friend is not someone who sends you chain letters because he wants his wish of being rich to come true.

Now pass this on! If you don't, you'll be eaten by wild goats.

CHAIN LETTER TYPE 5:
This e-mail is wicked-cool! It was started by Microsoft to test its e-mail tracking system because, you know, a big high-tech company like Microsoft always sends important new software out over the Internet to be available to any moron who can operate a computer, right?
Plus, they have formed a secret merger with Disney Corp., who has agreed to give up millions of dollars in revenue by giving everyone who reads this e-mail, passes it on, looks at it, knows someone that looked at it, or is related to someone who is a friend of someone who looks at it a FREE, ALL-EXPENSES-PAID TRIP to Disneyland, Disney World, or Euro Disney! So pass this on to everyone you know that is gullible enough to believe this (or not)! Even if it's not true, hey insulting all of your friends by implying that they are gullible by sending this to them is worth the improbable chance that you could go to Disneyland! Even if you lose all of your friends because they are tired of receiving this kind of junk from you, it's worth the chance, right? And just for good measure, if you don't send this on, Microsoft will send its specially trained attack-goats to pilfer your house and eat all of your family, SO SEND IT ON!!!!!

CHAIN LETTER TYPE 6:
VIRUS WARNING!!!

If you receive an email entitled "Badtimes," delete it immediately. Do not open it. Apparently this one is pretty nasty. It will not only erase everything on your hard drive, but it will also delete anything on disks within twenty feet of your computer. It demagnetizes the stripes on ALL of your credit cards. It reprograms your ATM access code, messes up the tracking on your VCR and uses subspace field harmonics to scratch any CD's you attempt to play. It will re-calibrate your refrigerator's coolness settings so all your ice cream melts and your milk curdles. It will program your phone AutoDial to call only your mother-in-law's number. So be careful!
Forward this to all of your friends, relatives, neighbors, family, enemies, plumbers, garbage men, stock brokers, doctors, and any other acquaintances!
It's for their own good! Thank you.

CHAIN LETTER TYPE 7:
Here is a cute picture I drew.

(\ /)
> > ( \ / )
> > ( \ / )
> > ( /<>\ )
> > ( / \/ \ )
> > / \ __
> > ( ) ( )
> > ~~~~~~~~
> >
It is a decapitated angel. Send it on to all of your friends so it will brighten their day like it did yours! If you don't, demon-possessed goats will move into your house and eat all of your socks, leading you to believe that something is wrong with your washing machine because all of your socks keep disappearing.
Have a nice day!!!

There. Now that we've covered and dumped on the seven main types of chain letters, on to the ironic part. In order for this to get any popularity, send it on!!! If you don't think it was funny at all, don't bother, but otherwise forward this sucker to everyone you know!! If you don't, I don't care, but why not show this around? Take two minutes and forward it.
Thanks!

Remember, the moral of the story is, if you get a chain letter, ignore it.
If it's a joke or something, send it, sure, but if it's gonna make people feel guilty (i.e., the goatless boy from Baklaliviatatlaglooshen) or nervous (i.e. Miranda Pinsley who ended up in a waterfall of manure) just delete it.
Do yourself (and everyone else in the world) a favor, and say,
"DEATH TO CHAIN LETTERS!!"

Forwarding E-mail

For the most part I enjoy receiving forwarded emails that many people complain about. However, I do not enjoy the hoaxes and urban legends. I also wish more people would take the time to copy and remove all those annoying >>>>.

For those who like to forward things here are some suggestions on how to make it more enjoyable for your friends.

• Copy and paste the item into a new email. That way you can easily delete the >>> at the beginning of lines and excess headers and subject lines.
• Do not forward virus warnings or other scary messages,including missing child alerts, unless you go on one of the hoax sites to check if it is true - 99 percent of the time it will not be.
• Send an email to everyone in your address book and ask them how they feel about forwarded emails. Some people are too polite to tell you they delete them without reading unless you ask.
• Read things before you forward them. I have received things that I know the person would not have passed on if they had read the complete message.
• If you have to click several links to get to a message, copy and paste into a new email.
• When you send an e-mail to more than one person, use BCC (blind carbon copy) instead of TO or CC for email addresses. That way people you send to won't see the other addresses. In Windows Mail if you click on View then All Headers while in a message you will see BCC.
  Sometimes not having anything in TO will cause messages to go into people's junk folder. To prevent that put your own email in TO.
• Remove the closing remarks that accompany many forwarded emails. Both the ones that threaten bad luck if the person does not forward the message and the ones that say to mail it back to the person who mailed it to you. Here are a couple of things you can substitute.
  • If you wonder why friends forward jokes without writing a word, maybe this will explain:
    When you are busy, but still want to keep in touch, you forward jokes.
    When you have nothing to say, but want to keep in contact, you forward jokes.
    When you have something to say, but don't know how to say it, you forward jokes.
    When you want someone to know they are remembered and cared for, you forward jokes.
    So next time you get a joke from me, know that I have not sent you just a joke, but that I thought of you today and wanted to send you a smile.
  • Send this to all your friends but don't send it back to me. I already read it and you don't need to show me that you are a good friend. I already know!

Viruses Hoaxes Plague E-Mail

(excerpted from info by Sandra Medlock)

Imagine the phone rings, you pick up the phone and say "Hello." A voice laughs and says you have received a virus over the phone and in 24 hours you'll become very sick. The next morning you wake up with a scratchy throat, runny nose and headache.
You:
A) Remember an incident three days ago in which a person in the crowded office elevator sneezed several times.
Or,
B) Rush to the phone and call your friends. You tell them that if they receive an out-of-area call, they'll get a virus over the phone.

This may sound ridiculous, but similar scenes are enacted a million times over through email.
Every day e-mailers send and receive messages warning recipients that reading e-mail with a specific subject line will give their computer a virus.
Here's the truth: Reading e-mail will not put a virus on your computer. Here's the caveat: An attached file included with the e-mail could contain a virus. The virus will not become active unless you open or use the attached file.
The solution is to use anti-virus software to check attached files for viruses.
The Good Times virus, Deeyenda, Join the Crew, and Internet Cleanup Day are a few of the hoaxes circulating on the Internet.
Anti-virus software publishers computer organizations maintain lists of hoaxes and virus warnings on their Web sites. It takes just a few minutes to check out whether an virus warning is legitimate before you forward it to your friends.
Hoax messages have several common features:

Many hoaxes mention a warning by the Federal Communications Commission but the FCC does not issue warnings on computer viruses.
Hoaxes are filled with technical jargon (most of it fake, but novice computer users won't realize this).
Hoaxes claim that dire consequences will occur to your computer and describe these consequences with lots of capitalization and exclamation marks.
The virus being mentioned is said to have already has caused damage at a reputable company (CIAC calls this "credibility by association".)
The message strongly or repeatedly urges you to forward the message to everyone you know.
The forwarded message rarely includes a legitimate contact. If a name and phone number are included, they frequently are fake.
If you receive a suspected virus hoax message, don't forward the message to others until you have verified the truth. Look for information about the virus on accredited Internet sites. Do a search on 'virus hoax' or 'urban legends'. One such site is Snopes