Dialogue: Let's help get rid of e-mail garbage

I just love e-mail. It's always a thrill when there are messages in my mailbox. I could even be labelled obsessive some days if anyone knew how regularly I logged on and checked in.

It's little wonder, though, that I do check so often since mostly there is stuff there but, oh, when there's not and I hear that little "plink" (you're a loser!), it can really bring me down.

Yet I'd still prefer no mail to rubbish.

Like when I check my Hotmail and its all lose weight, get a degree, make more money or how to be debt free, fat free, worry free. And how come so many people have little sisters who want to get their gear off for strangers?

Even worse is when my real friends forward messages, chain letters, sob stories and frightening virus warnings.

The internet, through e-mail, has seen a proliferation of chain letters, threats, requests for help and scams. I don't even like it when I get 10 things the Dalai Lama says about being good.

I just want plain old mail, personal messages from people I know. As for the funny stuff, unless its side-splitting or very clever, I don't want it.

I didn't feel so strongly about junk mail until quite recently when a so-called pal sent me a chain letter. If I sent it on to 10 people I would experience untold good luck. It was tempting. After all, who wouldn't want a slice of the easy-money pie? Also, the alternative, if I didn't forward it, would be some heavily bad karma.

Fear of misfortune almost made me send it on. Instead, though, I opted for a stern reply stating in no uncertain terms my feelings about the chain and that I trusted she'd never send me that kind of letter again.

I still spent the rest of the day worried that I was going to be hit by a bus or struck by lightening even though I knew in my heart that chain letters are nonsense, their purpose purely propagation.

Problem solved. Or so I thought.

The next week I received two forwarded messages from friends. One was about the plight of women in Afghanistan and the trials they're suffering under strict Muslim rule. If I stopped the petition the signatures already on it would be lost. I had to send it to one person, for my conscience's sake. I couldn't bear the thought of it being me who'd let the sisters down.

The other message was about a new date rape drug called Progesterex, a substance available to vets to make large animals sterile. Slipped into a drink and used in conjunction with a tranquiliser it would render a woman not only unconscious but infertile. Readers were asked to send it to all their lady friends - it might, after all, save a life.

How could I not? I have friends who not only enjoy being bought drinks by men, they actively encourage it. What if some nasty guy with veterinarian connections slipped one of my pals a Mickey Finn? I wouldn't get to be a godmother so I forwarded the message to a few people I thought should see it.

Then I'm checking my e-mail - yet again - and read that the Afghan thing is a fraud, Do not, I was told, respond to this e-mail. Anyone who needs a copy already has one ... due to a flood of hundreds and thousands of messages, all mail to this address is being deleted unread. Please, it continued, do not forward unverified chain letters no matter how compelling. It is specifically prohibited by most internet service providers; you could lose your account.

And the date rape drug? It was just groundless scaremongering begun by web-fingered geeks with too much time on their hands.

Of all the people I could have sent those things on to, though, I luckily chose urban myth debunkers and have learned that, if I do feel inclined to send something on, I need to check it out first.

So, please, unless you think a message is really going to change the world for the better don't forward it, chuck it out. Chain letters, warnings and electronic hoaxes are the junk mail of the new millennium, similar to viruses in the way they ae spread and in their effect.

But we all have the power to stop them. Its simple - just don't pass them on.