Forward This to Everyone You Know - NOT!!!

You have your cursor on the "reply to all" or "forward" button and you're about to respond to an email a friend sent you on the latest modus operandi of the parking lot stalkers.

Stop, don't hit send. Even though it appears you might even save a life somewhere, somehow by sending the email about how the rapist will approach a woman's car with a five dollar bill saying she dropped it and he wants to return it.

Making sure all your friends know this is an evil trick intended to lure them into opening their window or door is something they need to know to keep them safe, right? Wrong. Rapists and armed robbers do not hold conventions, lunch meetings, or gather on conference bridges or in chat rooms to evaluate, discuss, and plan how to trick people into opening their doors or windows.

I received one such email last week. It told a story, supposedly of the author's first hand experience, about a robber or rapist gaining access by pretending to return money he would claim the unsuspecting victim had dropped as she exited a convenience store. Next to the end of the email it warned women to keep their doors locked and windows up, even if a stranger was trying to give you back money he claimed you had dropped. The very last sentence was "forward this to everyone you know." That, my friend, is the key phrase that tells you to do just the opposite from now on.

Even though it all sounds like great advice and something every woman out there should beware of, the intent of the e-mail's creator was not in the least bit benevolent. If you receive one of these types of emails admonishing you to send it on to everyone you know, take a careful look at it. You'll see numerous addresses in the email itself from all the forwards. You may see multiple addresses in the addressee fields. Tons of innocent people's addresses. When someone occasionally does a "reply to all" on that email, guess who benefits? The evil spam sniffing creator of the email, whose address is buried somewhere in the thread. He gets all those great, valid email addresses to use for his nefarious activites: identity theft, spoofing, spamming, etc.