UGH!   I check my 3 email accounts religiously.  One I use for this blog, another that I had set up in college and basically now just use as junk mail exclusively (random signups, etc) and then this one that I use for personal correspondence.  I rarely let any of them pile up for more than a few days to a week, at most.   Well…today’s visit to Mailbox #3 kinda miffed me so much that I had to share my irritation.   Okay, we all get our share of junk mail/spam that hawk ’member’ enlargement miracle pills and genuine Rolex watches from China but those are OBVIOUSLY spam.  The ones that get my panties all in a bunch are the sneaky ones that make me read it halfway before realizing that it’s SPAM… from my friends!!! 

I received 25 exact emails from 4 people I know.   Hmm.  How can I say it clearly.  

One person sends an email chain with some sad or heart-tugging story…you know, the ones that end “send to 10 people in the next 5 minutes or you’ll have bad luck until you eat pizza again” or something dire like that.   3 other recipients of that original email then resend it to you (gotta love that “reply to all” feature!) with some offhanded “I need all the luck I can get” comment.  

Imagine that 25 times, but with different content:  Friends tests that state ‘if you don’t send this back to me, you were never a friend’, letters from some foreign land bank official wanting to give me $10M,  email chains claiming if I send it to 20 people, Bill Gates will send me $50 or Steve Jobs will give me an iPod,  and various others that start off with “this really happened to a friend of mine…”

This is what causes a lot of spam out there.  Everytime people send a chain fwd, all our email addresses get sent along to the next Joe Blow who could just as well use it to further his online business of monkey toupees or erectile dysfunction miracle tablets. 

I swear, I’m not trying to attack those who like to send them…I’m sure that for a lot of people it’s just a way to say ‘hello’ or ‘I’m thinking of you’ without actually writing an email but for me, it’s just another virtual Pennysaver coupon book that I’m just going to throw away before opening it…so please don’t be offended if I don’t respond…I’m just probably too busy clearing out my inbox.