Most of the people on this forum are very nice and helpful. Sometimes in their attempts to be helpful and/or generous, they send out information that has a great possibility of doing nothing but inconveniencing others.

A typical example is a recent warning that was posted about a virus that was going around, called the "Invitation" virus. It has been around since 2000. No such virus exists. When you forward information about things like this to your whole address book, you tie up valuable bandwidth. And you look really stupid.

Another example is the NEA petition. This is the petition to get congress not to sign the bill cutting the amount of federal dollars sent to PBS, CPB and all the other public broadcasters. It was defeated in 1995 and also in 2005. So, although not a hoax, it's old news. The petitions don't exist any more, so you are just wasting your time.

There also is no kid in England collecting get well cards. He quit doing that after his cancer was cured, about 15 years ago.

So before you forward ANY e-mail you get, or post it to the Café, please check with http://www.snopes.com to see if it is true.

You will save everyone a lot of time.