Have you read your email lately? You can get anything from Beer from Miller Brewing Company to $1000 from Bill Gates to a free car from Honda just for forwarding email messages. As ridiculous as all of these sound, many people believe them and pass the messages on. The result is that those of us who know better have to put up with receiving these things from our less astute friends.
There are two things you should do when you receive these messages. The first is let the sender know that it's just a hoax and then delete the silly thing. To help you convince your friends of how implausible these things are, I've put together a list of references you can point them to. These are all articles by About.com's wise and savvy Urban Legends Guide, David Emery. Most of what I've listed are hoaxes that tell you to forward the message and some of them are other types of hoaxes or scams involving free stuff. I've listed them in alphabetical order by their main subject.
If the hoax you are looking for is not listed here, just use the search box below to locate it on David's site. Chances are he will have an article or link to one on the subject. For example, if you were looking for information about the free car from Honda hoax, you could type in Honda and click the go button.
