Not Everything You See On The Internet Is True
I don't know how many times I get the email or message to pass it along, this was on the news, you could get thousands of dollars.
If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is? Some people shut off their common sense when they see these. If you forward it or share it, how does Microsoft know what your address is? Are you assuming they already have it, or that facebook or whatever you are using to forward the message is going to share it for you? That part is creepy.
So many times I get those posts and also posts that say don't answer a friend named (fill in the blank) because they are a hacker. Or a story about a woman who has a man hop in her car while she gasses it. Some of these may have official looking names and job titles under their name, so you might think, this must be true it was written by a Sherriff. Most of them are not true.
Why is it people keep sending these things out without checking them?
I would research something like that to see if there is a better way to win.
Check them first, before forwarding. How do you do that? Well, there are a couple of ways, you can do a search with Yahoo!, Google or whatever your favorite search engine is. The other is snopes.com
All you have to do is put in part of the story and it will find it. Snopes will tell you true or false or partially true. Then you can read about it and not send it out.