Lie Pie Title: Email Tracker Programs?
Lie Pie Classification: lie pie classic, terror pie

Editor's Note:  Honey, there is no such thing as an email tracker program that sends a list of your email recipients back to a host computer for use by spammers.  Here it is from Snopes.com and UrbanLegends.About.com.

While this email tracker business is a bunch of B.S., it is a wise practice and common courtesy when sending an email to multiple recipients to "hide" your recipients' email addresses by sending emails "bcc" rather than "to" or "cc."  If you don't take this precaution, anyone out to make mischief could manually harvest the email addresses from your email, and you certainly wouldn't want that to happen.

Unfortunately, there are viruses and worms that can infect your computer, harvest email addresses from your hard drive, and transmit them back to a spammer via a botnet.  Now, I'm not entirely sure what all that means, but it sure scares the wadding out of me.  I'm by no means an expert on these matters, so you best check into it a little, but I did find some interesting reading on the harvesting of email addresses on Wikipedia.  I also ran across Spamhaus (it appears to be a credible organization, it's also mentioned on McAffee).  These folks at Spamhaus are hot on the trail of spammers and cyberspace identity thieves, and you might want to read up on what they are doing.  I'll tell you one thing for sure:  I'd like to turn a few spammers over my knee, and snatch the rest of them bald headed.

All this talk of botnets, viruses, worms and spiders makes your Granny's hair stand on end.  For Pete's sake, honey, don't open up any attachments or click on links in emails from folks you don't know.  Don't respond to any email that requests personal information or passwords--no legitimate company will request personal information from you in an email.  Don't download free software from the internet if you can avoid it.  Make sure you have a good firewall, and buy yourself some anti-virus software.  It's unfortunate that a few ne'er-do-wells are gumming up the works for the rest of us, but it's a sad fact of life on the internet.   --Granny, 1/4/09

WATCH YOUR STEP:  STEAMING VIRAL EMAIL B.S. STARTS HERE

VERY IMPORTANT, please heed.

Here is a nice little tidbit of information that came my way this morning. So if any of you are wondering why I didn't return something to you that said something like: 'If I don't get this back, I'll.... or, 'See how many flowers you can get back', or 'Forward this to 10 people in the next 5 mins., or something bad will happen to you', etc.

The following is why I won't be sending them back.

1) Any time you see an E-Mail that says forward this on to '10' of your friends, or sign this petition, or you'll get bad luck, good luck, or whatever, it almost always has an E-Mail tracker program attached that tracks the cookies and E-Mails of those folks you forward to.

The host sender is getting a copy each time it gets forwarded and then is able to get lists of 'active' E-Mails to use in SPAM E-Mails, or sell to other spammers.

2) Almost all E-Mails that ask you to add your name and forward on to others are similar to that mass letter years ago that asked people to send business cards to the little kid in Florida who wanted to break the Guinness Book of Records for the most cards.

All it was, and all any of this type of E-Mail is, is a way to get names and 'cookie' tracking information for telemarketers and spammers - to validate active E-Mail accounts for their own profitable purposes.

You can do your friends and family members a GREAT favor (PLEASE) by sending this information to them; you will be providing a service to your friends, and will be rewarded by not getting thousands of spam E-Mails in the future!

If you have been sending out (FORWARDING) the above kinds of E-Mail, now you know why you get so much SPAM!

Do yourself a favor and STOP adding your name(s) to those types of listings regardless how inviting they might sound! You may think you are supporting a GREAT cause, but you are NOT in the long run. Instead, you will be getting tons of junk mail later! Plus, we are helping the spammers get rich! Let's not make it easy for them!

Also: E-Mail petitions are NOT acceptable to Congress or any other organization. To be acceptable, petitions must have a signed signature and full address of the person signing the petition.