There are plenty of filters for incoming email that screen out, identify, or defang viruses, spam, and other undesirable mail.

I propose a filter on outgoing email that would use similar techniques (searching for key words and phrases, mostly) to notify you when you might be falling prey to a known scam, propagating a bad meme, repeating an urban legend, etc..

"You are aware that Craig Shergold doesn't really need your postcards?"

"That picture is a Photoshop fake."

"You know, everyone has seen that joke by now, it's not really funny any more."

"That Nigerian 'government official' is just looking to defraud you."

After delivering its warning (with links to more information), you could of course choose to override it and send the mail anyway -- but you could also choose otherwise.
-- egnor, Nov 22 2002

Urban Legend Bot http://www.halfbake...rban_20Legend_20Bot
seems very similar to this idea by [madradish] [krelnik, Oct 05 2004, last modified Oct 17 2004]

i +1 ya not so much for the email filtering aspect; but "meme filtering." thats an evocative notion: a software able to classify & decipher the 'type of meme' a phrase/sentence/etc is based on it's grammatical form & a few key words, such as "you ought to..." & "the fact is..." & "i, being a messenger of God Almighty, command you to...", etc.
-- redundantly_redundant, Nov 22 2002


"You are about to send a message that Microsoft doesn't like. Are you sure you want to send it? Really?"
-- sadie, Nov 24 2002


While there may be people out there who need this assistance (at least they've stopped sending me mistaken virus alerts), I rather doubt they know it enough to buy your software.
-- DrCurry, Nov 24 2002


That's why it's installed at their ISP's mail server, or by whoever set up their machine for them.
-- egnor, Nov 24 2002



random, halfbakery