How to Stop Chain E-mails

By The Lost Motorcyclist, February 2011

There are probably hundreds of chain emails being circulated on the Internet. Many are harmless but some chain emails posing as helpful are actually malicious, alarming and possibly even damaging.

The best way to screen these emails is to not forward those that are false. How can you do that? There is a website www.snopes.com that has information on most of the chain emails which are circulating the Internet. How do they do that? Well it's easier than you think, because most of the emails have been circulating for many years, sometimes with hardly any changes.

Simply go to Snopes and type words in to the search box, it works like Google except it's to search for hoaxes, scams and chain emails.

For example, if this chain email starts off with

Florida court sets atheist holy day.

In the picture, I have typed these words into the Snopes search box. (if the picture is too small to see, click on it for an enlargement).

Type the significant words from the chain email into Snopes search box, and click GO! Make sure you spell the words right. Snopes does not tolerate bad spelling like Google does.

This will tell you if Snopes has any information, and whether they have found it to be true or not.

Next, if it is false, email the link for this blog

http://lostmotorcycles.blogspot.com/2011/02/how-to-stop-chain-e-mails.html

to the person who forwarded the email to you. That will help them to do the fact- checking for themselves, and perhaps they will also forward this link back to the person sending them the chain email, and so on and so on. Then hopefully, at some point everyone will be able to fact check the emails before forwarding, and the misleading chain emails will disappear entirely from the Internet.

Click HERE for the live Snopes website when you are ready.