Chain Letters/Hoaxes

     Yes, chain letters.  They can be funny.  They can be an annoyance.  They can also be very damaging.

     If it tells you to forward to everyone you know its one of two things: an irritating chain letter or a damaging hoax.  More often than not, it's an irritating 20 year old hoax.

• The Animal Rescue Site
• The Breast Cancer Site
• The Hunger Site
• The Rainforest Site

There are quite a few sites that you can, just by visiting, donate food and supplies to all kinds of causes. The above sites are all great ways to give and I'm sure there are more.  They are all hosted by the same or similar non-profit organizations and all have links at the top of the page so it makes it easy for you to give daily.  Do you want to give even more, you can buy all sorts of nice merchandise at their sites.  All profits go to the cause.  These are totally legit organizations; although, I'm sure there are a few emails in circulation that claim some  pretty wild things about these sites.  The above sites all get the ML360 stamp of approval.

     If you know three laws of hoaxes and chain letters, you can spot one a mile away.

     1.  There is absolutely no way any company or non-profit organization can track the spread of an email especially across multiple mail providers, PERIOD.  Unless there is an image displayed in that email that acts as a simple page counter.  This would only give them the number of times the email was read and maybe your IP address; there is no way for any entity to trace the actual identity and/or mailing address of the person sitting behind the screen reading/forwarding the email without a court order.  Thus, GAP will not give you free clothing if you pass the message on to 30 people and companies can not send you any money. 

     On the subject of charities like Make-A-Wish, among others, you donate to charities, not the other way around.  This still doesn't rule out some company sending any money to a dying child.  Come on, companies and charities give money freely to sick children all the time, without meeting special requirements like, spreading a silly email to a set number of innocent, unsuspecting people.

      2.  There is no way a dumb chain letter is going to kill you, your dog/cat, parents, as much as you'd like it your brother/sister, burn your house or you business, or slowly delete a file a day from your hard drive.  If you believe in bad luck that's fine but believing in chain letters is a little ridiculous, not to mention how rude you are for spreading the supposed bad luck on your friends....  If you believe in such things.

     3.  Antivirus companies DO send emails that you may forward to everyone you know.  These emails are by subscription, meaning you have to sign up for them.  Even though some Trojan, virus, and worm warnings are real, the repeated circulation of the warnings are a nuisance.  Some "semi-true" warnings have been in circulation for more than ten years and the virus is not even commonly found on anyone's computer anymore.  If you sign up for emails at one of the vendors' sites and get a waning, email all your friends and give them a heads-up on the site address and tell them to sign up as well.  Please don't forward the actual email.

     A hoax making its rounds since 2001, says it simply destroys sector 0 of your hard drive.  Let it be known, a real virus could delete sector 0 on your hard drive.  Also, note that a knowledgeable person could put back sector 0 of a hard drive and get back all your files.  Physical damage is unlikely and improbable.

     A few years ago, a hoax called for the user to search for and delete a file on their computer called SULFNBK.EXE, accusing it of being a virus.  Keep in mind, sulfnbk.exe like any executable "can" be infected by a virus.  SULFNBK.EXE turns out to be a vital part of Microsoft's Windows and is a  program that is used to restore long file names.  DO NOT believe ANY email you receive like this.  You must have an anti-virus on your computer, especially if it is connected to the internet or a network. See the  Top 10 Programs to have on your Computer or the Security section in the Downloads section of this site.  This small list is just what the title says, a list of ten programs that you should not be on the internet without

------------------------------------------------------------------
CINGULAR (THE NEW A T @ T)-FREE-MSG.
Attention! All Cingular Customers send this
message to ten people and Cingular will credit
your account $60!
-------------------------------------------------------------------

For future reference, it is absolutely and totally illegal for any phone company to monitor and/or read the contents of text/email messages sent from your phone.  Therefore, they can't tell if you forwarded that exact message or sent ten or more of your friends the secret family recipe to your meatloaf.  Only law enforcement or the federal government, under the Patriot Act, could court order the phone company to produce records of your text/email messages sent from your phone.  The act expands the authority of US law enforcement agencies for the stated purpose of fighting terrorism in the United States and abroad. Among its provisions, the Act increases the ability of law enforcement agencies to search telephone, e-mail communications, including text messages, medical, financial and other records.

For that reason, you will not get credit on your bill.  What you will get is a charge for those ten or more text messages, especially if you go over your monthly allotted text message limit.  That is, if your not on the unlimited text message plan.

That being said, NO mobile company, to my knowledge, in the United States of America, could track that text message. 

Besides, Why would they give you credit for bogging down their own cell phone data networks?  Duh!

     PLEASE.  Stop the waste of Electricity and Bandwidth!

     Pardon me, but my math is a little rusty.  If I had shown up for math class once in a while I may have learned more.  If you find an error in my math see my feedback form.  Not trying to be a smart ass, the following is just a example to get you thinking.  

     Lets assume you sent this dumb email to 10 people. At lease half of them (5) actually believe it and send it to another 10 people each. So far the count is 60 emails that people have wasted power and internet bandwidth to download and read.

     Lets assume, of those 50 that received the email, half (25) sent it to 10 people each. So far the count is 310 emails that people have wasted power and internet bandwidth to download and read.

     Lets assume, of those 250 that received the email, half (125) sent it to 10 people each. So far the count is 1560 emails that people have wasted power and internet bandwidth to download and read.

     Lets assume, of those 1,250 that received the email, half (625) sent it to 10 people each. So far the count is 7810 emails that people have wasted power and internet bandwidth to download and read.

     Lets assume, of those 6,250 that received the email, half (3,125) sent it to 10 people each. So far the count is 39,060 emails that people have wasted power and internet bandwidth to download and read.

     Lets assume, of those 31,250 that received the email, half (15,625) sent it to 10 people each. So far the count is 195,310 emails that people have wasted power and internet bandwidth to download and read.

     Lets assume, of those 156,250 that received the email, half (78,125) sent it to 10 people each. So far the count is 976,560 emails that people have wasted power and internet bandwidth to download and read.

     Lets assume, of those 781,250 that received the email, half (390,625) sent it to 10 people each.

Holy Bat Crap!!! 

     That's over 4.8 million emails that were sent starting with just one email you sent because you fell into the trap of a chain letter, hoax, or outdated warning or chain letter.  Just think how many people's computers you could damage unknowingly, by forwarding the sulfnbk.exe chain letter or the next one that you may get tomorrow.  Yes, you are just as responsible as the person that originally wrote it.

      And that's just an estimate, because there is no telling how many "smart" people didn't forward it in each branch. Think how many kb/s you just wasted and how many kilowatt hours it took to have those email servers work just a little bit harder to send and receive those Emails then send that text to your computer and all 4,882,810 victims and it never ends. Take a calculator and see how far it goes. 9 million... 400 million... 800 million 16 billion... Where does it stop?

Stop forwarding useless/unwanted/outdated emails to other people.

     Be a hoax hunter.  Never believe anything you read in an email even if it is from a well know believable company.  Always hold it up to a microscope.

     Here are a few such microscopes you can look through:

• Snopes

• Hoaxbusters

• VMyths

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