This is a combination vent/consumer alert/instruction post.
Tonight I found in my inbox the latest heart-tugging forward begging me to pass it on because there was a darling baby with leukemia dying and money would be donated. I visited (this is the instruction part)
http://snopes.com and sure enough, it is a great big hoax.
Before you forward the latest medical alert/get a gift certificate from the Gap/save this missing child email, PLEASE visit this site and see if it is legit. Don't clutter up your friends' inboxes with a bunch of ridiculous crap that 95% of the time has no basis in fact. It's impolite and inconsiderate - I mean, would you send junk mail to your friends? That's what you are doing. Oh, and if you have a friend that does this (whose name you cringe at every time you see a new email from them) direct them to this site.
This post brought to you by the Foundation to Keep Crap off the WWW, Inc.