Chain e-mail
Chain e-mails are e-mails sent to a bunch of people in order to get them to send money. This is very illegal and you could end up in the big house for quite some time.
 | It has been suggested that this article be merged into Chain letter. (Discuss) Proposed since October 2006. |
Chain e-mail is a term used to describe e-mails that encourage recipients to forward them on to someone else, the Internet versions of the chain letter.
Some e-mail service providers prohibit the use of their service for sending chain letters in their abuse policy, including Yahoo! and Comcast.
Chain letters may also qualify under other types of illegal activities, as in the case of a Ponzi scheme asking recipients to send money and forward the e-mail. They may be harmful, and contain trojans.
Chain letters are discouraged by RFC 1855.
Some may seem fairly harmless, for example, a grammar school student wishing to see how many people can receive his e-mail for a science project, but can grow exponentially and be hard to stop. They may contain false information, such as the famous "Forward this to everyone you know and if it reaches 1000 people everyone on the list will receive $1000" type e-mails. They may also be politically motivated, such as "save the scouts, forward this to as many friends as possible". Some recent chain e-mails say that a company "will stop its free email service if you don't send this message to X people". Some threaten users with bad luck if not forwarded.
Forwarding chain e-mail may increase a user's risk of getting viruses, and may also increase the amount of spam received, since participant's e-mail addresses are sometimes visible and may end up in the hands of spammers, either directly or via mailing lists archives on the web.
E-mails that are forwarded simply because they are enjoyed, such as urban legends or jokes are not necessarily under the chain e-mail category, although some chain e-mail is obviously humorous. Likewise, most spam is not chain e-mail as it doesn't typically ask recipients to forward the e-mail to friends.
See also
References
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External links
- RFC 1855: netiquette guidelines
- Break the chain
- E-mail forwards - Forwarding responsibly
- The Joy & Doubt in Reading & Forwarding Chain Email"
- Spam Blocking Directory
Examples of urban-legend type chain e-mails
- Mikkelson, Barbara & David P. "Bill Gates offering $1,000 for forwarding e-mail" at Snopes.com: Urban Legends Reference Pages.
- Mikkelson, Barbara & David P. "IWon.com offering cash prizes for forwarding e-mail" at Snopes.com: Urban Legends Reference Pages.
- Mikkelson, Barbara & David P. "Charity getting money via forwarding e-mail" at Snopes.com: Urban Legends Reference Pages.
- Mikkelson, Barbara & David P. "Help a dying child get into the Guinness Book of World Records by sending him business cards" at Snopes.com: Urban Legends Reference Pages.
Scam chain e-mail
- Mikkelson, Barbara & David P. "Ponzi scheme chain e-mail" at Snopes.com: Urban Legends Reference Pages.