ANTI-URBAN LEGENDS E-MAIL PRE-FILTER Do you have a friend or relative who loves to forward on e-mails containing urban legends to all of their contacts? Wouldn't it be helpful if they could be informed that they are about to forward on a possible urban legend before they do so? THE CONCEPT Very simply, organizations that provide e-mail services (e.g. gmail, yahoo, etc) should, before they are sent, compare e-mails to samples of known urban legends. If there is a match, then they would receive an immediate bounceback indicating that they might have been duped into spreading an urban legend - do they still want to proceed? The bounceback would include a hyperlink to a page that would discuss that particular urban legend. In very short order, gullible people would be educated about the nature of urban legends and, hopefully, they would begin to conduct basic web searches before forwarding them on. HOW YOU CAN HELP If enough people suggest this idea to any of the e-mail organizations, once one starts providing this service, the others will probably follow. That would be the most helpful thing you could do. But more easily, you could sign this petition which would add weight to this concept. Also, you could include the following tag line to you e-mails: Help stop urban legends: www.urbanlegends.vze.com