Bill Gates is giving away his fortune!

In the last week I have received emails from friend’s about Bill Gates giving away his fortune (no really, its TRUE! Someone got a cheque, and they were an attorney!) , and another one about scray rapists who jump in the back of your car while you are filling up with petrol.

Both of course can be found on snopes.

• http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/nothing/microsoft-aol.asp (in fact, this is exactly the same email body content that I received, originally from 2004…)
• http://www.snopes.com/horrors/madmen/backseat.asp

Surely someone can code a widget or some sort of tool that scans people’s outgoing messages to see if they already exist on www.snopes.com and alert them with ‘Warning! It looks like the email you are trying to send is a hoax and may annoy all of your friends!’. That would be magic.

I feel a little bad about sending back emails like that, but really, I get enough spam already from people I DON’T know every day.A colleague of mine politely replies to the group when he receives one of these emails and points them to snopes, requesting that they check there before sending on anything.

What are the hottest 25 hoax emails? Check them out here