Email: Chain Emails and Hoaxes

This month I want to talk about email again: specifically chain email letters and hoaxes.

An email chain letter is any message that, either through overt instruction or through compelling content, encourages the reader to pass it on.

For some reason we tend to believe things that we read more than things that we are told. One consequence of this is that email is often treated more seriously than it deserves. The ease with which email can propagate tempts us to not think about it as seriously as we might if we had to buy, say, 50 stamps.

If you receive an email claiming "The Brazilian congress is now voting on a project that will reduce the Amazon forest to 50% of its size." and that you can protest by sending the email to all of your friends and that the two hundredth person should send the list of names to an email address in Brazil. You may just add your name on the bottom and send it to your friends.

A chain letter like this has been circulating since at least early 2000 and the events described in it were basically true. However, the "project" it warns about being in the works was scrapped by Brazil's Congress in May 2000. I saw a version of this in February 2006.

There are many hoax chain email letters as well. One warning of a new virus which "opens an Olympic Torch which "burns" the whole hard disc C of your computer" is completely fictitious and has been around in various forms since 2002.

This site has lots of advice on chain email: http://www.breakthechain.org as does this: http://www.truthorfiction.com. The site http://snopes.com has lots of information on urban legends.

There are ten warning signs to watch out for listed here: http://www.breakthechain.org/top10.html. The top one being that: It asks, begs or bullies you to forward it on to everyone you know.

Also think that you will be giving your email address to, potentially, thousands of people that you don't know. Some of them will have spyware which harvests email addresses and some of the eventual recipients will be spammers. So one consequence of joining in is that you get more spam. Probably a lot more.

Now send this to all your friends...

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