YOU WILL NOT BELIEVE THIS!

[spooked]

I was feeling a bit run down due to a death in the family and lots of travel over the last week and shared with my mom in a short email last night that I had "a fever and shivers". She called this morning to say that my email to her had a
RED FLAG next to it with the words THIS MESSAGE IS BEING MONITORED.

Can you believe it?! I guess there is no attempt to even pretend that they are not monitoring our EVERY WORD. What other freedoms will we lose with this new "pandemic"?

[JuniperLea]

1. You're right! I don't!

Screenshot? This is pretty freaky.

[Zywiec]

4. Me neither

I'm sure it was deleted immediately.

[hedgehog]

2. Me, neither.

[EFerrari]

Are you sure it isn't some kind of joke or spam?

[Truth2Tell]

3. More information please.

Who is your email provider and who is hers?

Can you ask her to forward the message back to you and post it here?

[havocmom]

11. and what email filters does the mom have

I 'flag' messages from my daughter. We both assume they are monitored owing to us both being subversive liberals and all ;)

[lucretia54]

46. My mother lies to me and tells me her computer "won't let her get what I sent her".

Then she tells me I'm too pushy because I sent her a political video.

She's the damn reason I grew up interested in politics in the first place! We had the TV on while we ate dinner- it was Edwin Newman, or David and Chet.

[havocmom]

61. did you really mean to reply to moi?

cuz it makes no sense :shrug:

[HowHasItComeToThis]

20. THIS MESSAGE IS BEING MONITORED

THIS MESSAGE IS BEING MONITORED

[spooked]

22. the email provider

is Fairpoint

My mom forwarded the message but the red in the subject matter did not show up in my email. When I called my mom a little bit ago she said the words shivers and fever were ALSO in red in my email to her.

[Why Syzygy]

62. Has she been searching the web with those terms?

Maybe highlighting got turned on...

[DCKit]

68. Wow. They're showing up in red in your posts too.

I'm skeered I'll catch it just replying to your post.

Hey, at least they didn't write "You're" and spelled "monitored" correctly.

[WI_DEM]

5. Did you send it to your mom's place of business, becuz yes, many businesses do monitor

incoming e-mail.

[JuniperLea]

8. Good call...

Very good.

[Freddie Stubbs]

6. Correct. I do not believe this

[lamp_shade]

7. Reeeeeeely?

[MineralMan]

9. No, I don't believe it.

There is some reasonable explanation that has nothing to do with being snooped. No agency would inform a recipient that an email was being monitored. More likely a spam filter or something in her email client.

Is she, by any chance on AOL?

[inna]

34. exactly. nt

[CJCRANE]

10. {REDACTED}

{CLASSIFIED}

[Bicoastal]

12. THIS POST NO LONGER EXISTS.

THIS PERSON NO LONGER EXISTS.

[MineralMan]

13. DELETE THIS POST BEFORE READING!

{{CONTENT REDACTED}}

[Rebubula]

14. Uh huh...

...Pics or it did not happen.

[negativenihil]

15. sorry but...

with out a raw copy of the message headers - and the message itself, i call BS.

[spooked]

16. I just called my mom to get the message forwarded...

I just called my mom to have her forward the message to me and she said that the line was in red at the top and it is now gone. It only showed when she opened my email the first time. It was a message in red that said "This message is being monitored". However, the subject line of my email is still in red.

This is my mom's home email address and she does not have AOL and she has never had this happen before.

Maybe someone out here could try sending a message with such words and see what happens.

I have no reason to be making this up. I am stunned!

[MineralMan]

17. AOL. Feh! It's probably some new nonsense they're

doing. Amateurs On Line, indeed. Switch her over to something like Yahoo! Mail. It's easier and has a great spam filter. Pay the $20/yr to get the Plus Mail, and it's all there with no ads.

[MineralMan]

19. OK. I think I have it.

In Outlook, you can flag an email to be "watched." If you do that, "This message is being watched" appears, along with a flag.

AOL may well have something like that as a "feature." Mom probably clicked something without realizing it and set a flag on the email that would help HER watch it. I don't use AOL, and haven't for about 127 years, so I'm not sure what's in their email window.

I think I'd not worry overmuch about this. Moms make lots of computer mistakes. Mine does. My wife's mom, too. We're forever getting calls about something wierd in her email.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

24. Uh ............

If you read his post carefully, you'll see that the OP said his mother DOES NOT have AOL.

So.............

[MineralMan]

56. You're right. I misread. I have asked what email client

his mother is using. No answer yet. I think I know what's going on, but without more information, I'd have to spend two or three hours to figure it out, and I'm not that interested.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

57. You're nice ...........

And, really, it's not worth the time ..............

[spooked]

25. The words SHIVERS and FEVER

were ALSO in red. That wouldn't happen if you accidentally clicked to flag a message...

[Zywiec]

29. Oh, well if the words SHIVERS and FEVER were in red

it all makes sense now...

:crazy:

[intheflow]

30. And why would those words be singled out?

Swine flu pandemic? I have to go with consensus here and think your mom clicked something or some other explanation we don't have enough info to suppose. No real spook system is going to flag a message telling the people it's watching that it's watching them.

[MineralMan]

55. But it might happen if she has a spam filtering program in

her mail client. It might well flag suspect words, then pop up a dialog box to ask the recipient if they wanted to dump the email as spam. When you hear hooves, think horses, not zebras.

As I said later, tell us the email client and any spam or malware software she has installed and we'll find out what's going on and explain it to you. Don't tell us anything, and we can't tell you anything.

The government is not flagging people's email over words like fever or shivers. There simply hasn't been enough time to implement such a thing, and it's vanishingly likely that they'd bother.

[Truth2Tell]

21. Send her the same message again.

Mention the pigs you were petting and the guns too.

Ask her to screen grab it.

What does "it is now gone" mean? It wasn't part of the email itself? Where exactly did it appear?

Disappearing ink?

I'm trying to keep an open mind here, but need more to work with.

[spooked]

26. more info...

I asked my mom if it was like a pop-up that came up and she said no, it was one line in red at the top of my message and it is now gone. It only showed the first time she opened the email.

[Why Syzygy]

63. That would mean that anyone who gets news feeds,

sends or receives news stories, discusses the flu or anything along those lines would be MONITORED.
Not gonna happen.

gmail DOES show adverts based on words in emails. The technology is there.

[FSogol]

18. I know how to turn the monitoring off. Go to your Edit pull down menu

and uncheck the gullible button.

HTH.

[Codeine]

23. Breaking News!

DU member gullible and easily terrified by shit made up in own head! Film at 11!!

THIS MESSAGE HAS BEEN MONITORED AND STUFF!

[Posteritatis]

27. Someone's lying here. (nt)

[Puzzler]

28. Nice of the monitors to let you know.

.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

31. Here's something from Yahoo Answers...

From http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060723185251AAkIg1H

What does "this message is being watched " mean?
I just noticed it on an old message in my hot mail inbox.
A round thing with something that looks like binocolers with the statement
"this message is being watched"
IS this something I need to be concerned about?

* 3 years ago

Additional Details
Frankheimer...found answer on this forum
http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPos...

did what this person suggested...
"The short answer to your problem is that YOU are watching that email! If you select (highlight) the message and then go to the "Message" option on the top tool bar you will notice that there is a check mark beside "Watch conversation". Simply click on that and you will de-select it. The binoculars should be gone along with the bar in the email that says "This message is being watched".

[spooked]

33. The message and the

individual words shivers and fever were in red even before my mom clicked on them. She did not click on anything to watch a message or conversation. It is really weird!

[Gidney N Cloyd]

36. She SAYS she didn't click on anything. They ALL say they didn't click on anything.

[Fla Dem]

32. Forget about the email..if you have shivers and a fever..

GO TO THE DOCTORS

[CreekDog]

35. PLEASE STAY IN VIEW

:tinfoilhat:

[Duer 157099]

37. Well, maybe it's part of the NSA/HHS pandemic plan

Maybe they're just doing email recipients a favor by highlighting in red, those emails from people who may be sick, so they know who to avoid? I mean, your mom now knows to not invite you over for dinner.

I mean, since they have all the monitoring equipment in place, it'd be trivial for them to do this.

(only half tongue-in-cheek)

[wroberts189]

38. Umm.. Can you post the whole email including the full headers?

That would show if it was intercepted.

Tell me you're mail program and I will google the instructions to you.

[Kashka-Kat]

39. Hey its called DATA MINING! All in a days work for them guys at homeland insecurity

[BadgerKid]

40. I'm currently feeling

the fever for the flavor of a Pringles. I am shivering at the thought of {#`%${%&`+'${`%&_NO CARRIER

[reggie the dog]

42. I have the chills going up my spine

thinking of the illegal hash I am about to burn hotter than any fever.

[hootinholler]

44. Well I've got a fever

For more COWBELL!

-Hoot

[Sparkly]

51. I got chills!

They're multiplyin'.
And I'm losin' control.
'Cause the power
You're supplyin',
It's electrifyin'!!

[reggie the dog]

41. could be the cops

The police went into my dealers email in college and opened his messages, so he would log in and messages he had not opened were already open. He warned me to look out but sure as shit because I had emailed him about going bike riding his response and several other messages had been opened. Neither of us got busted by the way. I think that I dont really give a fuck who listens in or watches me any more. When I was 20 I got off of a felony possession with the intent to deliver cannabis charge. When I walked out of the courthouse a DEA agent walked up to me, handed me his card, and told me that they were still watching me and that I could call him if I wanted to talk. I threw his shitty card at him, told him I was not a rat, and that his agents did not watch too good either because I had violated my bail every day by possessing and using cannabis. You should have seen the look on his face. I just assume that they know who I am, where I live, what I smoke and the like and just live my life until I end up locked up.

[walldude]

43. Gimme a break, the government, cops, FBI, CIA don't send you

a big red message saying "We are Spying On You!" This is either work related or some kind of spam.

[rug]

45. You shouldn't be emailing your mother if you have a fever.

[MineralMan]

58. That's true. We must all be vigilant against computer-borne

viruses. Personally, I suspect the open-source people of planting this "swine" flu and spreading it via their secretive "operating" system. Remember, they're always touting their "Opera" web browser. Perhaps this is really Penguin flu. That can be very series and poses a hugh risk.

As you know, swine can be smelly, unkempt animals. So can libertarian-leaning Linux geeks. I'm sure you follow me, so I'll say no more, wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

[many a good man]

47. Get her password and log in as her

Then show a screen shot.

[Warren DeMontague]

48. You know what? I know exactly what's going on, but I have to type it quickly because MMMMFFFM MMFFFM

MFFFF!!! ARRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!


Nothing to see here. Move on, citizen

[Butch350]

49. I sent one from work to my home saying...

I have a Fever and flu with a temperature of 102. I have a sexual disease, clap, gonorrea (sp), herpes etc...

no red flags or letter being monitored

[blogslut]

50. She probably clicked the FLAG icon

...from her email client Menu bar.

[nadinbrzezinski]

52. Assuming this is real

the authority comes from the declaration of national health emergency

That is where that comes from

ASSUMING this is for real

Public health can and is tricky... and at times people do surrender rights (willfully or not) when we have one

[spooked]

53. That is the only thing that makes sense...

It must have something to do with the current national health emergency.

I have been a member of DU since 2002. I have no reason at all to be coming here to make up a story like this. I must say I am surprised at the amount of sarcasm and insults here today.

[MineralMan]

54. So tell us what email client she's using and we'll tell

you what she clicked. Could be a spam monitor asking her if the message was spam and it highlighted words that hit the filter. Then it opened a dialog box and asked if she wanted to send that mail to the dumpster. She clicked no and the filtering program cleared itself from that email. Without knowing what email system she's using or what antivirus or anything else, we can't tell you anything.

If you post something with no details, you're going to get lots of strange responses. When you assume from the beginning that something sinister is going on, you're going to get snickers and teasing. There's a perfectly simple explanation, but we can't give it to you based on the information you provided.

So, if you want serious reponses, give us some serious info.

[havocmom]

60. nadien, how bouts we send emails with same words and see if it happens again

but we probably shouldn't hold our breaths ;)

off to email my wayward daughter about my, ahem, fever and chills....

[spooked]

64. Let us know if it happens to her too

Thanks for trying that!

[havocmom]

67. LOL nothing happened

:rofl:

[B2G]

59. Because it makes far more sense

to monitor emails as opposed to hospitals and doctors' offices.

:P

[NNN0LHI]

65. Is your mom a Republican?

[Random_Australian]

66. Ok, that makes no sense. Why monitor a message? It doesn't change with time, you know.

Also, since you've not specified a "they", I choose leprechauns of fire (they run down a beach in a human competition to the tune "chariots of fire" in slow motion)

More concisely, it makes no sense to monitor *a* message. If you really cared, you'd read them all. Not sit there and monitor one.

Long story short, I'll guess a super-stupid initiative from her email client, combined with an unfamiliarity with computers.

But hey, maybe I am wrong. ;) I just don't think so.

[didact]

69. that's funny.

[Dorian Gray]

70. Maybe the computer

thought you were sending your mom the virus.