Forward this message on to your friends! For every recipient, Bill Gates has agreed to give X amount of dollars to the X Foundation for the disadvantaged Xers!

Forward this message on to your friends! If you don't, you will have 8 years of terrible luck!

Forward this message on to your friends! This guy was drugged and had his kidneys stolen from his body! Don't let it happen to you!

Forward this message on to your friends! Don't open any e-mail with the subject "Join the Crew"! It will unleash a virus that will delete all of your files!

Stop. Please.

In this article, we'll show you:

       
• Why these types of e-mails are NOT harmless fun

       
• Why you shouldn't pass these on for your own safety

       
• How to find out if an e-mail you have received is a hoax

       
• How to warn others


       
• The Ultimate Hoax

     

Commercial e-mail ads, hoaxes, and chain letters now constitute over 30% of all e-mail sent. Wondering why the Internet is so slow nowadays? It is because servers and network cable connections are clogged with junk like these. Wonder why e-mail takes so long to get across the country/state/city? Look no further.

These messages, when sent in bulk to hundreds of people, clog up the net and cost YOU money in connection charges. It also causes Internet Service Providers to buy more servers to handle all this e-mail. Do you think that they swallow that cost? Nope -- they pass it on to the consumer in per hour or per month charges.

The problem is, even though more and more servers and connection points are expanding the Internet, the percentage of junk mail keeps going up! This is not to mention the huge, bandwidth clogging videos and games people are sending each other these days. It's not just harmless fun...

Forward At Your Own Risk

If that is not enough to stop you from passing on those petitions and chain letters, consider this. These petitions and chain letters are NOT started by random people for fun. They are started by commercial enterprises, the same commercial enterprises that send out unsolicited commercial e-mails (spam) to your account all the time. Why? Well, eventually that petition or chain letter is going to get back to them. And included in that message is the e-mail address of every person who forwarded it on! They collect those e-mail address and place it on their lists. And they sell those lists to other unscrupulous companies looking to send commercial e-mail. And you get more and more spam in your inbox...

Besides, these petitions are not real. If a petition were to be sent around, the petition would be on a web site, where the non-profit foundation can get reliable information directly from people who choose to visit. Petitions circulated by e-mail are forwarded around and around, but they never get back to the "foundation" in need of support. How could it? You're just forwarding it to your family and friends, not employees of the foundation.

Virus alerts are just as bad. You cannot get a virus just by opening up an e-mail. The only way to contract a virus is to load a program or document sent to you via e-mail. This includes all the cute animated Christmas cards and "Whack-A-Mole" type games. These are programs, and very susceptible to virus infection. Another good reason not to send them along to your friends. You may be forwarding more than you think...

Hoax Resources

So how do you find out if the e-mail you received is a hoax? Well, we estimate that 99% of all e-mail petitions and virus alerts are hoaxes. When in doubt, check a computer news site to see if a particular virus is running rampant. Better yet, consult some of the links at the end of the article. These sites document hoaxes in order to protect those who don't know any better.

What to Do, What to Do

What can you do if you receive a hoax? The best thing to do is to notify those who sent it to you that it IS a hoax and ask them not to pass those messages on anymore. Alternatively, HoaxKill provides an automated e-mail service. Just forward the offending message to hoaxkill@hoaxkill.com -- HoaxKill will extract every e-mail address tied to the message and send them an explanatory warning about the hoax. Don't worry, HoaxKill keeps a list of everyone they've e-mailed, so they won't e-mail anyone twice. And they're legit.

The Ultimate Hoax

Someone combined all of the major hoaxes into one giant, funny hoax. We're posting it here so everyone can get the basic idea:

Warning, this is a HOAX:

"I know this guy whose neighbor, a young man, was home recovering from having been served a rat in his bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. So anyway, one day he went to sleep and when he awoke he was in his bathtub and it was full of ice and he was sore all over. When he got out of the tub he realized that HIS KIDNEYS HAD BEEN STOLEN and he saw a note on his mirror that said "Call 911!"; But he was afraid to use his phone because it was connected to his computer, and there was a virus on his computer that would destroy his hard drive if he opened an e-mail entitled "Join the crew!"

"He knew it wasn't a hoax because he himself was a computer programmer who was working on software to save us from Armageddon when the year 2000 rolls around. His program will prevent a global disaster in which all the computers get together and distribute the $600 Neiman Marcus cookie recipe under the leadership of Bill Gates. (It's true-I read it all last week in a mass e-mail from BILL GATES HIMSELF, who was also promising me a free Disney World vacation and $5,000 if I would forward the e-mail to everyone I know.)

"The poor man then tried to call 911 from a pay phone to report his missing kidneys, but reaching into the coin-return slot he got jabbed with an HIV-infected needle around which was wrapped a note that said, "Welcome to the world of AIDS"; Luckily he was only a few blocks from the hospital - the one, actually, where that little boy who is dying of cancer is, the one whose last wish is for everyone in the world to send him an e-mail and the American Cancer Society has agreed to pay him a nickel for every e-mail he receives.

"I sent him two e-mails and one of them was a bunch of x's and o's in the shape of an angel (if you get it and forward it to twenty people you will have good luck, forward to ten people you will only have ok luck and if you send it to less than ten people you will have BAD LUCK FOR SEVEN YEARS). So anyway the poor guy tried to drive himself to the hospital, but on the way he noticed another car driving along without his lights on. To be helpful, he flashed his lights at him and was promptly shot as part of a gang initiation. What a sad story."

Yes, it is sad.