Chain emails designed to simply waste people’s time are perhaps one of the most annoying types out there, simply because of the complete pointlessness to it. The creator of these emails had no financial or political motivation for it, rather just wanted to waste as many peoples time as possible.
One classic chain email that fits this description is the chain email that claims that forwarding it to so many people will result in some sort of action being taken, typically in the form of a prize or reward going to the person who forwarded the email. Some deviations claim that failing to forward it on will result in some action being taken.
It is one of the classic chain emails that have been circulating for over 10 years and is so effective because like many chain emails of this nature, it tricks the victim into sending it to multiple contacts and the victim has no way of knowing they are being tricked until after they sent the email and their promised reward doesn’t land on their doorstep a few days later.
Of course the victim could perform due diligence and research the email to confirm it is a ruse. There are many sites like ours that archive the most popular chain emails like this and dismiss them for the time wasting hoaxes that they are.
One of the early popular variants of this type of hoax is one veteran email users may very well be aware of and that is the rumour that former CEO of Microsoft Bill Gates was sharing his wealth with lucky email users who had to forward a specific email onto a certain amount of contacts. Some variants claimed it was because they were tracking an email tracing program. Some claimed Mr. Gates and Microsoft were working with companies like AOL and even Disney. Some variants even came equipped with arbitrary amounts of money and even pictures of people receiving checks. What they did have in common however is that they were all fake. Every single one of them.
Another popular example of this hoax is the chain email that claims that failing to forward a message onto a certain amount of contacts will result in that contact being removed from a specific service. Most Internet companies have had their own version of this hoax, including MSN, Yahoo, Live Communities, AOL, Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. The hoax will always assert that failing to forward a message onto at least so many contacts will result in the reader’s account being terminated. The typical excuse the message lends to justify this seemingly strange ultimatum is that the respective service is trying to clear up unused accounts and forwarding the message proves your account is still active. Of course services like the ones mentioned have more accurate and less intrusive methods of detecting inactive accounts, and of course all emails matching this description are again absurd hoaxes.
The reality is, you cannot track forwarded email. It is technically impossible to send an email and track who sends it, when they sent it, where they sent it, and who they sent it to. It simply cannot be done, even by an Internet giant like AOL or Microsoft. Additionally, even if it were possible, it would be considered by many, specifically privacy advocacy groups, to be a gross invasion of privacy.
Companies do not give away free prizes for forwarding emails. Companies do not remove people from their service for not forwarding emails.
This means that any email that comes into your cyber mailbox claiming it needs to be forwarded on so that some action can be taken you will know straight away that the email is a silly, time wasting ruse, and you can delete it from your inbox and save everyone on your contact list some time.
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