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Junk E-Mail's, cost the recipiant in the end!
#1
Chain letters were once a fairly common snail-mail occurrence. The letters often contained a list of names and addresses and instructed you to send a specified amount of money to the person at the top of the list, add your name to the bottom, and then send the same letter to ten people you knew. The letter promised that within a few weeks or months, you would receive back a huge amount of money when your name reached the top, based on the principle of exponentially increasing returns. The problem: if you do the math, you discover that within a few generations of the letter, everyone in the world will have received it - long before your name reaches the top and you become the recipient of the money.

Because they are a form of "pyramid scheme" that defraud those who believe the promises, not to mention an annoyance, chain letters that promise something of value are illegal in most jurisdictions in the U.S. However, with the advent of the Internet, another type of chain letter has emerged and is clogging e-mailboxes along with all the other spam.

These letters often seem innocuous enough. Rather than asking you to send money, they contain a poem or story and ask you to forward it to ten (or some other number) of your friends. Many people pass them on without a thought. After all, what's the harm? You aren't even asking people to spend money on stamps!

The problem is this: Internet bandwidth is not infinite. Every piece of unwanted mail that goes over the 'Net uses bandwidth and costs someone money, somewhere. ISPs have to pay more for additional T-1s and Internet backbone connections as the volume of traffic rises. More mail for their customers means a need to upgrade mail servers. Those costs eventually are directly or indirectly passed on to the customer. Dealing with unwanted e-mail also costs people time, and as the old saying goes, "time is money." These chain letters usually take more time than more blatant spam messages, because they often come from people you know. Thus, you're more likely to open them and spend time reading to determine that the chain mail isn't really a personal message.

Folks who send these messages tend to ask, "what's the big deal? Just hit 'Delete' if you don't like it." Particularly insidious, though, are some of the chain messages I'm seeing recently. They include, like many of the old snail-mail messages, statements that if you don't pass the message on, bad things will happen to you. They often include stories about how one person sent out the message and suddenly won the lottery, while another ignored it and died in a horrible accident a few days later. The implied threat is something that most of us will just brush off, but it victimizes the superstitious and naive. In my opinion, it's reprehensible to try to scare someone into participating in something like this.

What do you think? Are Internet chain letters harmless fun, or are they, at best, a breach of Netiquette? Have you ever forwarded a chain e-mail? Do you think e-mail chain letters should be against the law like their snail-mail counterparts?
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#2
MY MOM SENT ME ONE OF THOSE E-MAILS SO I CALLED HER AND TOLD HER NOT TO SEND ANY MORE OF THAT CRAP TO ME.
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#3
HEY SSOR! how ya DOIN?? hoope to finD y well happy and fishin! haha well these chain letters are somethin. i believe they hone in on the olders that are home all the time, have nothin else to do, and are very vulnerable to this type of sheme, power control, and very suseptable to the superstitions ALSO, that go along with these chain letters. as well as these that call to tell you to send money becasue you have won a million dollars./ my mother was gittin bad towards the end, {mentally, emotionally, as well as physical,} and without me knowin this, except one time towads the end of this, when this japanese, vietimese wonam kept callin insistin she talk to my mother, well come to find out this is what she was doin to ma, on top of that they finally caught these people and THE ATTORNEY GENERAL, FROM OUR STATE, TOOK THEM TO COURT, ended up winnin a settlement against these people, who did this to older people, in this type of situation, but by then, ma had died. BELIEVIN THAT SHE HAD WON THIS MONEY FER ME AND CLIFF, SO SHE DIDNT HAVE TO WORRY BOUT THE HOUSE ME OR CLIFF, TO EASE HER HEAD, WELL SHE DIED BELIEVIN THIS. THESE PEOPLE ARE THE LOWEST, AND I HATE PUTTIN THE SNAKE DOWN BECAUSE AT LEAST THE SNAKE STRIKES YOU TO YOUR FACE, NOT BEHIND YOUR BACK! these chain letters consist of the same idea.AND NOT FER WHO IT COST TO WHO TO PUT OUT ON THE COMPUTER BUT ALOT MORE! THEY THRIVE ON PEOPLES EMOTIONS, FEARS, DREAMS, HOPES, AND IN THE END ONE WAY OR THE OTHER KILLS! WHEN OLDER FOLKS, THEY FIND OUT THAT THEY GOT TOOK! AND HAVE SPENT ALL THERE MONEY, IT TKAES THERE PRIDE, SELF ESTEEM SELF RESPECT, THEY TAKE MOST PART OF THE SOUL. AND HAVE TO WORRY BOUT THEE FAMILY, WHEN THERE GONE.THIS IS THE LOWEST, they are very hurtful, mentally emotionally, when this is the only thing OLDERS} they have to do, is fill out papers to be able to win money, but ma got insessive with this. i did think it was just keepin her mind busy and would take up the time when cliff and i had to work. but these people were comin in and makin ma believe this. that she was gonna be able to set me and cliff up fine when she went. i believe this is the WORST CRIME THERE COULD EVER BE, TO DO THIS TO OLDER PEOPLE AN HTEY SHOULD BE PUT IN JAIL! HUNG! THEY STILL HANG PEOPLE FER STEALIN HORSES IN THE STATE OF VERMONT, WELL IF THEY CAN HANG EM FER STEALIN HORSES THEY CAN HANG EM FER TAKIN PEOPLES LIVES! THESE CHAIN LETTERS ARE THE SAME THING! ONLY THEY DONT CALL, THEY WRITE.THAT,S MY FEELIN ON THEM THINGS! SO KEEP[ AN EYE ON MA AND PA, CAUSE THATS WHO THEY THRIVE TO. DONT GO THRU WHAT I WENT THRU. LATER[Sad]
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#4
I don't believe in the harms nor the treasures promised or proclaimed from these letters. Some of them make me laugh and others cause me to delete it just that much faster.

They should put a ban on them or have you be able to restrict them in some way. They still have a ways to go on the spam ban as well. Just my 2cents worth.
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#5
we put on one of those pop up stoppers, so we dont git em. it regulates what comes in and keeps stuff like that out. it also tells ya if somethins comin in that a virus too. i like it alot better cause i can go in my junk mail and look to see if i got anythin comin thru that isn,t junk mail to me. easier. later[Smile][Wink]
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#6
I get some of those letters forwarded from friends of mine. They actually believed it enough to forward it to the 10 or 100 people that the letter asked for.
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#7
well as i said before, it really makes people believe that they will git a pay off or hones in on peoples dreams hopes, it,s discustin, how they thrive on other peoples lonesomeness, wishin,s and wants and especially NEEDS. they are vulnerable, and toooo TRUSTIN, and this is wrong, toooo bad that people cannot see it. i say this up above cause we need to take care of our own, because if we dont, whose gonna, and then, the BUZZARDS WILL COME IN. and i dont like puttin donw the bird. ahah i guess some just think it,s fun, or funny to send these on, they just dont realize what these can do. too bad. so ya fihin>> huntin or what hha?? i been shootin my little 22 rossi so much fun! i hit anythin i,m aimin fer. ahah got to git the 410 on it shortly. cliff went and got himself a good mossburg fer turkey huntin. too huge fer me. i can,t even lift it. haha 3in shots. ahha big! catch ya later.
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#8
The ones that piss me off are the ones that talk about Jesus and that if you don't pass it on it's because you're ashamed of him. What a bunch of crap.

I think believing in GOD is personal, and no one has the right to tell you how to do it.

That was my 2 cents.
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#9
I think they are annoying, I work in an office with several older ladies and we have company email. well this makes me a prime target for these stupid things I get five to ten a day. sometimesthe same one several times I generally just delete them.
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#10
yeah hear ya on that one, ma feel fer it. too.[Sad]
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