Chain Letters, Miracles, Hoaxes one and all. Don't be part of the problem.
Thursday, October 1st 2009 @ 4:40 PM (not yet rated)
Have you been invited to participate in helping create or celebrate a miracle today by email; or maybe contribute to a new Guiness World Record; or to forward an email to show your support for a cause?
As tempting as it may be to participate, just to avoid feeling guilty for not passing on email chain letters, please don’t do it! Despite the feelings of guilt that you may have in not forwarding an email from a friend (because it warns of dire consequences if you don’t - or good luck if you do!), there are too many very good reasons to abstain, and to ask them politely to stop being part of the problem.
Here are several of the reasons why I implore my family, friends and business colleagues not to forward any kind of chain emails.
Chain email plugs up the Internet with incredibly large amounts of inaccurate or useless information, delaying information that is valuable and needed. Use the same logic as you would use if someone asked you to call 911 to find out if it is raining outside.
Chain emails can, and often do, propagate viruses or contain phishing links. You should never click on links or attachments in unsolicited emails. Viruses have moved far beyond just infecting when you open a Word file with macros, and slowing down your computer or popping up unwanted windows. Now they can infect you just from visiting a website with targeted malware, or just one with poor security, or even by opening an email in preview mode without even clicking on a link in some cases. Then the infecting software on your computer may sit and wait for commands from hackers who use the affected computers as slaves in large scale attacks, or just to harvest your personal information as you browse and enter passwords. You may never know if your computer is being used for malicious purposes until it’s too late. Always use Anti-virus and Anti-spyware software, and keep the subscriptions up-to-date. You should also install a program such as McAfee SiteAdvisor (at http://www.siteadvisor.com) which can help you flag unsafe Web sites before you visit them.
Unwittingly, people who forward chain emails can lead hackers and spammers to everyone else’s email accounts in the recipient list, including yours. If any of the people in the list of recipients has a virus on their computer, that virus can pick up your email address and send it to spammers. Without even reading the email, you will then be subjected to future waves of spam emails because the chain email was sent to you at the same time as it was sent to the infected user’s computer. Your email address may get propagated through several generations, increasing the probability of feeding spammers exponentially. This is a major vector - method of infection - for spam.
Hoaxes cause a lot of unnecessary stress on people, and can even make people feel foolish. Quite often chain emails circulate with a warning of a virus that is about to hit, and how to avoid it. The only intent here by the originator is to make trouble for people. As the following article says, don’t take action on any information in an email that you can not verify in person.
http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/weekly/aa061699.htm .
There are many good links on this page for learning about hoaxes, scams and chain emails. Snopes.com is also a helpful site for identifying scams and hoaxes.
For people who understand the many problems that chain emails cause, it is very annoying to receive them, especially from their friends. It is hard to broach the subject and is something people may even put up with, in order to preserve their friendship. It’s like telling someone they have bad breath. How do you do it in a way that shows you’re just trying to help them avoid embarrassment?
You can start by pointing them to this article, and the many others that try to educate people, so they won’t be thought of as fools (or just smelly, in the case of the bad breath).
And what of the bad luck? Or good luck? Well, what are the chances I can convince you that there’s no such thing as luck? I’m not even going to try. But just think about it. The Internet is a big bunch of computers connected by wires and radio signals. Computers have a hard enough time being compatible with each other most of the time, and are very fragile when anything changes unexpectedly. We don’t really need more excuses for the things that go wrong in our lives, do we?
Complexity of everyday life is reason enough.
If none of the above points have convinced you to ask your friends to stop, or at least convinced you to stop forwarding chain emails yourself, then please read and/or send them a copy, or link to the following anti-chain email letter. It is guaranteed to void all bad luck you may have caught by not forwarding an unsolicited chain email.
http://www.kith.org/logos/things/chain.html
The bottom line is, if your friends care about you and know that you care about them, they should really be grateful to be given the facts about chain emails. On top of that, most businesses now recognize the threats to their computer networks, and have policies against chain emails… you could be in for some very bad luck if you don’t comply with your office’s security policies!
(This article was reprinted from my old Security Views website.)
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