Another one hit my inbox this morning.  Because of careless forwarding, I now have the email addresses of around 200 people I've never heard of and mine has been sent to a similar number.

This one, perporting to be a missing child, has been around several months, some have been going around for years.  Such emails are malicious and prey on people of good will who innocently pass them on.  At the same time poeple may be mssing real pleas for help becuase they have grown cynical.

So, I bcc-ed a reply to the fifty or so people in the tranche of which I was a part asking them to check www.hoax-slayer.com or something similar before they pass emails on, suggesting that they use 'bcc' rather than 'to' and that they strip out addresses before forwarding messages.  Hopefully these people will now think for 2 minutes before they pass on messages rather than wasting 2 minutes forwarding hoaxes...

Of course, by the time I'd checked and replied, the sender had sent me more spam mail...!  Grrr.