Chain Mails

When was the last time you forwarded a chain mail? Haven’t we all participated in a chain mail at some time or the other? The first mail we got we probably thought ‘that we must do our part to save this poor soul’ and promptly forwarded the mail. Its time we use our common sense (which is not so common in the chain mailing community) and put an end to these spam mails.

What are the kinds of chain mails that spam the world? There are mails that bring you good luck and a fortune in cash. ‘Send this mail to 20 people within the next 24 hours and you will get good luck’. What are these people trying to do? No doubt everyone could do with a little extra cash, but some people think they are doing a big favor by distributing these good luck - good fortune mails. How can forwarding a stupid mail bring you good fortune? If this were true there would be no poverty in the world. There would be "Good Luck Mail Agencies" doing enormous business. Just pay us $50 and we will send you a good luck mail. Once you get this mail and send it to 20 people you are fixed for the rest of your life. James Smith from Florida sent this mail to 100 people and he won a lottery for a million dollars. All you need is this mail.

Lets take a look at the different flavors these mails come in

First we have the Sponsored mail.
You just keep forwarding this mail and for every 3 people you send it to the official sponsor will pay 5 cents each. These sponsor’s are mainly AOL ,American Cancer Society, GE, Nokia , Ericsson .. the list goes on. Bill Gates himself said in the mail that Microsoft will pay 5 cents for every 3 mails forwarded. So there you go, and what’s more! it also says that Richard Brown sent it to as many people he knew and in 3 weeks time he got a cheque in the mail. Now how can Microsoft or AOL keep track of who is sending how many mails to whom? Ah they must have installed ‘Email Exchange Tracker Plus’.

Here’s some news for all those people still waiting for their "free cheques" to arrive. Turns out that ‘Email Exchange Tracker Plus’ could not keep count of how many email id’s belong to the same person. But no worries cause their Enterprise Edition has this plug-in. AOL and Microsoft are working on the implementation of the Enterprise Edition, that’s what is delaying your cheque. Its only a matter of time before we have a whole lot of Richard Browns walking around with their free cheques.

The second category is managed by this Omnipotent tracker
You forward it and an invincible supreme being will track it automatically. This class has a dual tracking mechanism. In the sense that if you do not forward the mail then it has its side effects. You forward the mail to 20 people and you get good fortune in the next 7 days. Smith Jones from Denver thought this was a hoax and did not forward it. The next day he fell ill and got Cancer. Luckily he changed his mind and forwarded it to 20 people the following day, after which he found out that the illness was because he had eaten a dead frog in his bucket of Kentucky Friend Chicken and it was not Cancer after all.

Of course just to clarify he did not eat this at an exotic restaurant, cause in these places frog delicacies are more expensive than fried chicken. Please note these mails are more potent since it’s not some earthly company like AOL or Nokia that is tracking the mails. This is one good reason why a lot of Chain Mail enthusiasts forward it just to be safe from the side effects of its ‘If you do not forward this mail...’ Part.

Then you have this third category of ‘The not so Automatic’ mails.
Here you have a mail about a person who suddenly woke up and found that his Kidneys are missing. The mail has a listing of people who want to spread the awareness of missing Kidneys. You are supposed to append your name to the existing list of names in the mail before sending it off. Note that the list will have a serial number against each name, and don’t forget to increment the running sequence against your name. Apparently the folks who run this chain mail are a bit understaffed so we should help them out in their book keeping. They have not invested in any software that does “Automatic tracking and counting of mails”. They are more of a people oriented company and don’t have a flair for automation.

These kind of mails often have a note saying ‘if the count has reached 500 please send it to ACS@AOL.com’ and they will promptly shoot off a cheque to the American Kidney Research Centre so that they can continue their research in the field of vanishing kidneys.

We also have the Good Luck mails that have absolutely no ambiguity in them. They are accompanied with crystal clear metrics and flawless statistics. You send the mail to 20 people and you have ‘Good Luck’, you send it to 10 people and you just get ‘Okay Luck’ but if you send it to less than 10 people then your going to have ‘Bad Luck for Seven Years’. Its all been scientifically proved, our folks who are forwarding these mails know it.

If it’s not about Luck it’s about a 4 year old boy who is dying of cancer and his last wish is to get a post card from everyone across the world. Just think of it, A post card from everyone across the world? We are talking about 6,600,000,000+ post cards. What does this guy have against the Postal Department? He is going anyways and is he also planning to take the entire postal department with him? The local post office employees are going to work themselves to death delivering all these post cards.

I personally always had my doubts on the sets of laws governing these mails. We have the sizable population of Business tycoons who have secretaries to manage and respond to their mails since they are too busy working other things. Now if a secretary does not forward the mail to 10 people then who gets the bad luck? The secretary or the Business Man in whose name the mail was addressed to? Well I guess that will probably listed on the FAQ section of these mails.

People who devotedly forward such mails have absolutely no clue of geometric progression. If you forward a mail to 20 people asking each of them to do the same. The first set of forwards we have 20 * 20 = 400 mails, the second set will have 400 * 20 = 8000 mails, the third forward will have 8000 * 20 = 160,000 mails and in the forth cycle we have 3,200,000 mails, floating this idiotic garbage.

All that these peoples brains process is - Please send this to everyone you know... or don’t know, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you just send it. Frank Wilson sent this to 500 people!!!! So what? If Frank Wilson is a nut does it mean you too need to do the same?
Most of these mails also have the all familiar last line that says 'Send this mail to as many people including the one who sent it to you, This shows you care!!'. The moron who forwarded you this mail wants to be spammed in return. Now if you send it back he will read it and since it says send it to all including the one who sent it to you. Tada !!.. you again get a copy. Are we playing Ping Pong here ??

How much time does it take to google out and check if an email is a Hoax? Hardly 30 seconds. But people don’t do this. If its come in an email it has to be true.

We have these super enthusiastic people who want to save others from a non-existent virus. You get warning chain mails saying Do not open any email with the subject ‘JOIN THE CREW’ This is a virus which will erase your entire ‘C’ drive and send out mails to anonymous people using your email id asking them to refrain from purchasing gasoline on April 7th as a mark of protest and to kick the butts of Oil companies. Let us on 7th April use the bus to support Aden who while traveling by bus got jabbed with an HIV infected needle wrapped in a note that said ‘Welcome to the world of Aids’. But if you are one of those few people who loaded all your software on you ‘D’ drive then there is no cause of panic as you will not be affected. Please pass this on to as many people as possible.

The next time you get such an email, First go to McAfee.com or Symantec.com and confirm if its indeed listed as a virus. If the folks at Symantec and McAfee did not think it necessary to inform the world about this virus, then there is no need for you to take up this crusade. Remember that by forwarding a standard chain letter to someone, you are saying, in effect, "If you don't do what I tell you to do, something bad will happen to you." Would you not be upset if someone else made such a threat to you?

Refuse to become a victim of these false Bad Luck threats. Do not propagate the chain.

- Cd