Start laughing at them. When you receive one of those group emails send it back to the group with a note that someone has already sent you that joke and you are not going to fall for it this time. You can reference the various Urban Legend sites at that time.

Thats a great idea. Laught at it and say "oh come on, you didn't REALLY believe that now did you?" then send the info.

Enlighten them as gently as you can - but do enlighten them. Their ignorance is harmful.

The name I prefer is ignoranus, one who is stupid and an a**hole. I was really ticked to read about the killing of the world's longest lived animal.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/oct/29/clam

I share your frustration. What is the correct etiquette when it comes to dumb emails? Not only when those involding wildlife, but urban legends in general? I sometimes ignore the silly ones, but when it comes to biology, nature or wildlife I can't sit idly by. I just can't. So now I look up the topic on Snopes or urbanlegends.com and reply by gently pointing out the myth and giving a URL that corrects it.

As I see it, if the sender is using electronic mail to promulgate erroneous and harmful information, then we are duty bound to use that same vehicle set the record straight. Frankly, I don't care if anyone gets mad at me for it.

I usually do a Reply All with a link to the snopes page that debunks it. As far as I know, only one person has gotten angry about that, but at least I don't get junk e-mail from them anymore.

Becky

Fortunately there's only a (large)handful of idiots out there who actually believe this stuff. They're the one's who blast it out to their e-mail friend-list, who generally ignore it.

A 'reply all' message may embarrass the original sender, but it also leads to a form of spam that clogs email servers and can bog down services. Rather than one targeted message, you just sent it to 50+ people who now have to spend time to read/delete/ignore the missive.

Best tactic is to send a single reply with a link to the Snopes site and tell them they're an idiot. Eventually they will get the message and you won't be compounding the proliferation of junk e-mail

"Fortunately there's only a (large) handful of idiots out there who actually believe this stuff. They're the one's who blast it out to their e-mail friend-list, who generally ignore it."

Well, in my case the so-called handful is my uncle and all his cronies. All are 80+ and they send and resend the same message to everyone in their e-mail lists. If one of them sends it, I probably get it at least a couple a dozen time from others in the group. The Reply All is the only way to stop them. :-)

I hit reply and paste the snopes link, and then hit send. Some people don't know about snopes, but I will send it everytime, otherwise it just doesn't stop. My sister will now ask(as its her friend that sends us these stupid emails) "Can you check if this is real?" and I will, would rather that than believing some fable.

I haven't gotten any of this garbage in a while. Some of them are dangerous misinformation, like a coughing technique that could "save you" if you were having a heart attack. Its a real technique, but is rarely used (since aspirin and getting help ASAP is a LOT more effective) and only if it had been shown properly to you by a medical professional. Otherwise, this technique this email described could actually kill you if you were in fact having heart trouble. My father died from a cardiac arrest, so someone forwarding dangerous BS information like this REALLY ticked me off, and in this case I said, "This is a dangerous fallacy to be passing around" and then a link to the snopes site. If they're a friend you don't have to call them an idiot, but I would show them the real information whether they get offended or not, in some cases, ignorance can be dangerous.