Thursday, March 09, 2006

The wild and wacky world of chain letters

A new chain email has been making the rounds recently, it is a message that claims that MSN is about to charge for their email service, and links to a story on the BBC website. The problem is that the story is five years old, and dates from an outdated idea by some MSN suit. Many people have been forwarding the email, the problem is that it is not true.

I love chain letters, but unfortunately, I don't get it anymore. From the early days of the Internet I used to get the best emails. There were the messages about sick children that had managed to get an organisation to pay money if you clicked on certain link or sent an email, like the famous variation of the Jessica Mydek email. And who could forget that great guy Bill Gates, who promised to pay people $1,000 dollars for forwarding a letter?

You may not be surprised to learn that I stopped receiving chain mails after I started debunking them to my friends. Nobody likes a smartarse.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Maybe you've managed to teach your friends to do a little research first before forwarding along ridiculous chain letters like the ones you mentioned? How many of your friends have become addicted to Snopes.com?

Andres Guadamuz said...

Not enough :)