Why Forward Junk Chain Letter Emails?
Every week friends and family members send me junk chain letter emails.
Bill Gates will pay you to forward this.
A fairy will grant your wish if you send to 1,000 friends.
Some kitten’s nose will fall off if you don’t.
Why do people forward these things?
These emails are annoying but I know I am more annoying. I put each one through Snopes and reply. Futile, irritating, and ultimately as much a waste of time as the original.
“There is no harm in it” I hear you cry. Well, probably not much harm over and above spreading potentially dubious information. I imagine harvesting those emails (each email tends to have tons of email addresses right there on the “to” line) is a rich source for spammers.
I don’t know if it is my imagination but these emails tend to arrive just before a bump in the number of spams. Coincidence?
That brings me back to the point, other than the “social gaming” aspect (seeing how far your lie can spread), why do people send these things?
I would really like to know the answer. Anyone know?
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Posted on April 8, 2008 by Chris Garrett
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Beats me, but I’d love to also know why.
Because “There is no harm in it”
And “It is good if someway someone we don’t know is helped”
And “I don’t want to be cursed by any e-mail”
@Rhys - I am not sure the people who forward them know
@Nishu - Do people really believe in email curses?
I know they’ve been around for years, I’ve recieved the same email literally years apart, imagine how many email address have been stuck on the bottom of those.
I never thought about it as a method for harvesting valid addresses, but that’s a very good motive for sending them out. The only thing is how can you guarantee they’ll return to you with the emails attached?
I have a similar question about emails claiming to sell me watches, medicines and software. I know it’s something to do with Bandwidth harvesting, but I’m unsure how.
Organised Criminals don’t want to steal your bank details anymore, that’s low hanging fruit - they want to get access to your bandwidth, apparently you can buy the bandwidth of millions of users for half an hour for a couple of thousand pounds from dodgy sources. This can then be used to hold major companies to ransom, “Either pay us a million dollars or we’ll hit your site with so much traffic it will crash for hours” Imagine how much an hours downtime would cost Amazon or Bet365.
If there is such a thing as an email curse I’d be dead a long time ago - I’ve never forwarded a spam. Email or text, I’ve binned hundreds.
I may be cursed but Karma is keeping my head above water :0)
It annoys me to no end but I can almost forgive the typical computer newbie but what makes me ANGRY is the people who keep sending the stuff even after being directed to Snopes links over and over again. It got to the point that I never receive e-mail from some people we know and enjoy being with in real life because I put them on my e-mail black list because they never sent me any e-mail to ask how I was doing, etc but rather sent nothing but this stuff as part of their mile long cc list.
The chain letter originated in snail mail. The US Post Office outlawed them - they are now officially a federal crime.
I imagine the first chain letters stuck in the ‘do this or ‘ blah, blah so their insight, their secret solution, their humor, would be passed on. A social form of viral marketing, abusive style. I won’t forward one.
And I consider sending something like that to be cruel to the receiver. You have just attempted to bully someone, that must now decide to risk their soul, their firstborn, or their job by *believing* the thing is nonsense, instead of trusting the sender to be respectful. I see all kinds of spiritual harm being done.
The reason the Post Office cared, was because the thing is a pyramid scheme. One letter becomes 10, becomes 100, etc. The bulk of the things, and the increased ability to embed scams and fraud schemes, made much work for letter carriers and their investigators. And harmed innocent people. The same thing happens with chain emails. People have to at least examine the title and sender to decide if they want to open the thing, then read it. Multiply by 20, 400, and 8000 and this adds to a significant waste of time and of server space and Internet backbone transfer bandwidth. And, as you say, there is the window of opportunity for anyone from the author onward to add a virus - or anyone with an infected computer to unknowingly harvest email addresses for spammers or add their infection to the ongoing chain email.
Because they have nothing better to do… I hate the chain emails and typically delete them unless they are funny animals. The older generation is very prone to fire these emails around when they get the internet and email for the first time.
They do have nothing better to do, or they are diluted in thinking that Bill Gates will really “pay it forward”. HA! And the sad thing is, some of my friends still forward me these emails, wish I could spam them
Misery loves company?
Thanks all, it seems there are a number of theories. Would be nice if one day we could solve this problem!