Chain letters and Scams, Oh My!

Friends,

I am sad to write this post. Recently I received an email of a beautiful poem written by a terminally ill young girl with cancer.

The email brought out that "she wanted to see how many people will get her poem" and that the email was send by a doctor at her hospital. It also stated that "By you sending this to as many people as possible, you can give her and her family a little hope, because with every name that this is sent to, The American Cancer Society will donate 3 cents per name to her treatment and recovery plan." and "please pass it on as a last request".

I'm sad because I've seen too many of these types of emails play emotional havoc on the one reading it and wastes our time and energy on trying to help by forwarding it - which starts the process over on someone else.
I'm also sad because if it's true, how can they "track" all the ones that we forward this email to? Without including the original sender, there's no way for the sender to know. And thus, no way for you to help by forwarding the email.
This is a false hope and potentially false message. I encourage you to follow some simple steps before forwarding emails to others:
(verbiage from netmanners.com)

1. Don't forward anything without editing out all the forwarding >>>>, other email addresses, headers and commentary from all the other forwarders. Don't make folks look amongst all the gobbly-gook to see what it is you thought was worth forwarding. If you must forward, only forward the actual "guts" or content of the email that you are of the opinion is valuable.
2. Think carefully about if what you are forwarding will be of value (accurate information -- check for hoaxes @ Snopes.com), appreciated (something the recipient needs) or humorous (do they have the same sense of humor as you do) to the person on the other side. Or do you just think it is worthy? If you cannot think of why the person you are forwarding to would like to receive the email - then don't forward it.
3. It should go without saying (But I have to say it because folks do so anyway.) that forwarding of chain letters; regardless how noble the topic may seem, virus warnings or anything that says "forward to everyone you know" simply shouldn't be forwarded because in most cases it is plain old B.S. (again check before forwarding @ Snopes.com). Email is email--there is no chain to break or continue--no cause or effect whether you do or not. Also, the fact is not all commentary will be appreciated by the other side if they have a different viewpoint than you do--be very careful here.
4. If you must forward to more than one person, put your email address in the TO: field and all the others you are sending to in the BCC field to protect their email address from being published to those they do not know. This is a serious privacy issue! Do not perpetuate a breech of privacy started by other forwarders who included their contact's addresses in the To: or Cc: field by continuing to forward those visible addresses to your contacts! Remove any email addresses in the body of the email that have been forwarded by those who brush off the privacy of their friends and associates. - This is one of the ways that spammers get your email!!
   

The poem was beautiful, and I will post it here for you.

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