It never fails. I wake up in the morning, check my inbox, and there they are, a ton of forwarded emails from a dozen friends. Today there were 114 of these, many of them were duplicates. I wonder, do the people who forward these emails know what they are doing?

Have you ever wondered where some of these cute emails get started? The originator is buried deep in many layers of forwards and cc’s and to find out you really have to dig. But I am here to tell you, these start with spammers.

Here is how it works… a spammer sends out hundreds of these blind emails to people he has never met. The person gets it, then follows the instructions and mails it to everyone in his email list. This snowballs as more people forward it. By the time it gets back to the spammer, there are hundreds if not thousands of VALID EMAIL ADDRESSES READY TO BE SPAMMED in the copy of the email!

Personally, I DO NOT FORWARD any of these emails to anyone, and thereby break the chain I am in and thereby do not increase my spam intake. I get over 4400 spams a day (ok, I own many domains) and have written custom programs and rules to handle that many emails, but even my best programming cannot eliminate the all the spam completely lest I eliminate real email with the bad. So I am back to deleting by hand.

These emails are fun and cute, but they are nothing more than ploys to get you to reveal you email lists. There is no curse, no good luck, no money coming your way, no long life, no anything, it is all made up and just another chain letter designed to plaster you with more spam emails.

I know that many people love to forward these emails, and in theory I do not have a problem with it, but there are things you can do to make the forward safe for you and your friends. Here are a couple of things that will slow down the spam to you inbox from chain letter harvesting:

1) Copy the body of the email into your new email, and do not include all the header information with all the other emails in it.
2) When you forward, use the BCC and not just the CC or Forward options. BCC (blind carbon copy) does not include any of the email address you have sent this to.
3) Do not forward chain letters.

Personally, I do not forward chain letters, it is safest and takes no time out of my day.