Chain letters generally involve getting “luck” or money by sending out the letters and “bad luck” if you do not. They are easily recognizable as the same letters that 50 years ago traveled the paper mails and now have moved to the more modern medium of electronic mail. They claim all manner of warnings and dire notices of doom and gloom for your computer systems or for some poor soul somewhere, all of which will be saved if you just send this message on to all of your friends. Enter the world of the Internet chain letter. In the years before computers, chain letters were common and were sent by U.S. mail and required a stamp. This limited the extent to which chain letters were passed on, because sending them involved a real, up front cost in time to type the letters and money for stamps. The fact that most chain letters asked you to send a dollar to the top ten people in the chain caused most people to ignore them.
Today, with the click of a button, a message can be forwarded to hundreds of people at no apparent cost to the sender. If each of the so-called good Samaritans sends the letter on to only ten other people (most send to huge mailing lists), the ninth resending results in a billion e-mail messages, thereby, clogging the network and interfering with the receiving of legitimate e-mail messages. Factor in the time lost reading and deleting all these messages and you see a real cost to organizations and individuals from these seemingly innocuous messages.
Science Fair Project Chain (or Geography Project or Sociology Project)
This is for a science fair project. If you could do this I would
appreciate it! DON’T ASK, JUST PLAY…it’s for kids!
Copy and paste this letter into a new email (PLEASE do NOT hit
“Forward”), then read the list of names. If your name is on the list,
put a star * next to it. If not, then add your name (in alphabetical
order, put no star.) Send it to ten people and send it back to the
person who sent it to you. Put your name in the subject box! You’ll see
what happens – it’s kind of cool! Please keep this going. Don’t MESS it
up, please!
Aaron*, Alan, Amanda, Andrew, Ann, Annettee, Brad, Carmella, Carol, Cheryl, Cindy, Daron, Dave, Deanna, Debi, Dianna*, Donna, Frank, Hank, Helen*, Irene*, Jacob, Joe, John, Judy, Julia, Julie, Kandy, Kathie, Kay, Kina, Laura*, Linda***, Liz, Lynn, Mary*, Mary Jo, Martha, Maureen, Melissa, Micheal, Nancy, Nita, Pat, Patty*, Paula, Phil, Rickey, Rusty, Sandy, Stacie, Stephanie, Susan, Susie, Tamara, Tammy, Tina, Tirrell*, Tracie, Verlann, Von, Yolanda, Val
Cheryl Xxxxxx
Special Education Administrative Secretary
Mahomet-Seymour CUSD #3
586-4947
If this were truly a Science Fair project, there would be a way to send information back to the student doing the project and some kind of an ending date so it is not forwarded forever. This is just another chain that you are expected to send to everyone you know. There are several variations of this email (we receive one every couple of months) and they have been circulating since the mid-90′s.
Read more about email chain letters – click here.
To read more about viruses and scams, click here.