The best place to voice your opinion

Chain Letters

initiated by roger on May 29, 2007

E-mail chain letters come in many forms: sympathy letters, giveaway letters, e-petitions, even dire warnings
of the latest computer virus. Most of the time the subject of the chain letter is no longer valid, or it is
just plain not true (which is most often the case).

The biggest problem with e-mail chain letters is their ability to multiply. Most people send on these messages
to everyone in their address books. But consider if they only sent them on to 10 people. The first person
(the first generation) sends it to 10, each member of that group of 10 (the second generation) sends it to
10 others and so on and so on and so on: 10
100
1,000
10,000
100,000
1,000,000

By only the sixth generation there are one million e-mail messages being processed by ISP mail servers,
causing them to slow down to a crawl or even crash. This example only forwards the message to
10 people at each generation. Most folks have more than ten names in their address books.

Additionally, forwarding e-mail chain letters to others without their permission is just plain rude!
This is "family spam" and is just as pervasive and insidious as the rest of the spam that shows up
in your inbox. Family spam is a term used when someone that you know sends you an unsolicited e-mail
chain letter. It is important to note that one rarely, if ever, gets truthful or accurate information
from e-mail chain letters. The bottom line is that you could be guilty of spreading falsehoods, and
your friends could be upset with you for loading their inboxes with junk mail.

Another excellent reason for not passing messages to everyone in your address book has to do with spammers
(bulk mailers of unsolicited mail). After a few generations of forwards, many of these letters contain
hundreds of usable e-mail addresses - just what the spammers want.

Please, break the chain and don't forward e-mail chain letters.
Become part of the solution, not part of the problem. To paraphrase Smokey Bear,
only YOU can prevent e-mail chain letters.

• 0 comments
• Watch It!
• eMail it
• del.icio.us
• digg it
• reddit