[Mb-hair] Hoaxes

Wed Feb 22 14:24:36 PST 2006

This is exactly how pyramid schemes work...

the best is NEVER to forward a message. 
if in doubt, go first to check the various urban legends sites!  
weepy stories and "too good to be true" stories are easy to spot as hoaxes, 
some are a bit more tricky.
After a while - and reading  reports on the urban legends sites!! -  
you have red  flags popping up and bells going off immediately, 
when you receive one of those messages.

A dead giveaway: veiled threats that something terrible will happen,  
if you don't send the message to at least 10 people immediately.
This includes prayers to saints etc!!
My advice: ignore and toss into the trash! 

For a while I have replied with this sentence to the most annoying of those
chain letters:
>>Here's my good luck prayer for you:
 May the fleas from a thousand camels infest your crotch 
and may your arms be too short to scratch.>>

yes, it's nasty, but effective. I am getting  far fewer messages now.

;-)

Dagmar

PS do feel free to answer this one!

xxooxx

Original Message:
-----------------
From: Cara Robin cararobindesign at hotmail.com
Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2006 10:09:14 -0800
To: mb-hair at islandlists.com, mb-civic at islandlists.com
Subject: [Mb-hair] Hoaxes

<html><div style='background-color:'><DIV class=RTE>
 Since list members occasionally send on hoaxes (and I'm certain more
often receive 
them!), this should be of interest, from the Hoaxbusters
site: Probably the 
biggest risk for hoax messages is their ability to multiply. Most people
send on the hoax messages 
to everyone in their address books, but consider if they only sent them on
to 10 people. The first 
person (the first generation) sends it to 10, each member of that group of
10 (the second generation) 
sends it to 10 others or 100 messages and so on. Generation: 1 2 3 4
5 6 Number of 
Messages 10 100 1,000 10,000 100,000 1,000,000 [this was in chart
form] As you can 
see, by the sixth generation there are a million e-mail messages being
processed by our mail 
servers. The capacity to handle these messages must be paid for by the
users or, if it is not paid for, 
the mail servers slow down to a crawl 
or crash. Note that this example only forwards the message to 10 people at
each generation while 
people who forward real hoax messages often send them to many times that
number. 
Recently, we have been hearing of spammers (bulk mailers of unsolicited
mail) harvesting e-mail 
addresses from hoaxes and chain letters. After a few generations, many of
these letters contain 
hundreds of good addresses, which is just what the spammers want. We have
also heard rumors 
that spammers are deliberately starting hoaxes and chain letters to gather
e-mail addresses (of 
course, that could be a hoax).  So now, all those nice people who were so
worried about the poor 
little girl dying of cancer find themselves not only laughed at for passing
on a hoax but also the 
recipients of tons of spam mail.
Thanks,  Cara </DIV></div> <hr> <a
href="http://
g.msn.com/8HMAENUS/2737??PS=47575" target="_top">Planning a trip for Spring
Break? See the 
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