Chain emails - please, think before you press the Forward button!

This guy says it so well!

But seriously, there are so many scary emails going round these days, and we could minimise everyone's stress by taking the trouble to check out the stories before we pass them on. There's an excellent website for this purpose: http://www.snopes.com/ - they sort out the true stories from the many hoaxes and urban legends doing the rounds.

And as for the other kind of chain emails, the nice stories - I read them, enjoy them, think how lovely and inspiring they are, and then, wham, I'm hit by the obnoxious bit of emotional blackmail at the end, telling me that if I don't pass this on to x number of people then I'm not a good friend or I don't really believe in God or whatever. Grrrr... But guess what, I've discovered a fantastic secret - it is actually possible to delete that horrible stuff at the end and then pass on just the nice story. And no, there is no secret spy inside your computer that will report you to the chain-email police, though there may be an email coming through to warn you of that too...

There ain't no such thing as a free report...

Goodness me, that assertiveness training did come in handy today!

I saw an advert in the paper recently for a certain consumers' organisation which all Brits know, with an attractive new offer: "For the first time Which? Reports are now available to you on an individual basis without you having to subscribe to Which?." Great, I thought, a step in the right direction! There were a few products on their list which I'm thinking of getting at some stage, and if I can get their report on each of these for 99p then that's good value as far as I'm concerned. So I phoned.

And yes, the offer is for real, and I did eventually manage to get the guy on the other end of the phone to take my £2.97 and send me the three reports I wanted. But clearly the whole idea behind this is to hook people into subscribing - what they tell you on the phone is that yes, you are very welcome to buy the reports you're asking for, but for just a little bit extra they can send you the magazines that these reports came from, and then if you don't want to carry on subscribing all you have to do is phone them and say so. And judging by the hard sell I got in the course of this phone call today, I can imagine how much time and energy I would have to spend on explaining that I really really really am sure that I don't want a subscription, even if they send me a free alarm clock...