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Iphtashu Fitz writes "We've all seen it. The e-mail forwarded to us from a friend who got it from a coworker whose sister's cousin's roommate's great aunt knows somebody at Microsoft. The one from Bill Gates himself offering you cash to forward the e-mail to others in order to test out their new e-mail tracking system. If you haven't received that one you've undoubtedly gotten other e-mail hoaxes offering anything from gift certificates to free computers to free airline tickets. How do these sorts of hoaxes start and who starts them? Well Jonathon Keats at Wired Magazine decided to track down the origin of the Bill Gates e-mail tracking hoax. After a few dead ends he finally located then-student Bryan Mack, who created the hoax on November 18, 1997 while at the University of Houston. In Mack's own words: 'It was just a joke between a couple friends' that eventually got out of hand. One of his buddies had gotten a make-money-fast spam and Mack said 'I can come up with something better than that.' Three minutes later, Bill Gates' email-tracing program was born. At first he just sent it to a few friends, but those friends sent it to other friends (and so on), and it didn't take long for the e-mail to transform from a joke to a full-fledged hoax."
Why do I even subscribe to Wired anymore, I can get the whole magazine in 2 weeks worth of articles on Slashdot, with full discussions...
Oh wait I know why, the pretty colors of the magazine!!!
On the other hand: back in the day we got email hoaxes stating there was a new virus that could be triggered by just opening the email. Back then we laughed with those pranks because we knew it was impossible. I kept laughing, until the day it really happened. Of course it didn't concern me because I read my email with pine, but I wasn't all too happy of that evolution... What I thought to be impossible had suddenly become a reality.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
I finally know the name of the man I've wanted to kill for the past 7 years.
You mean it doesn't work!?!? I've been forwarding those dang things for 7 years now trying to make an honest buck, and you tell me now!
Seriously, do the people who fall for this even think to consider the ramifications of their e-mail being tracked by Microsoft in the first place? That was a rhetorical question, of course - anyone stupid enough to go for this crap isn't smart enough to know he has civil rights, much less care about whether it's the government or a big corporation taking them away.
"Jon Katz isn't very sneaky. What an obvious pseudonym!"
"Also, the author of that Wired article is an idiot."
(-1, Redundant)
This is actually a very well written Wired article. It's interesting to note that it only took him a little bit of research (or so it seems by the article) to find this guy. All he had to do was find the original hoax email, and the guys name was the first on the list! This is what started it all, and every single revision one could think of. It went from Email, to Instant Messaging, people have even started recieving them on their SMS-enabled phones as well. It's amazing to think that there are actually people who still believe this stuff... and it still continues on...amazing.. well atleast amusing to say the least.
Hmmm.
These things start off as a joke but they quickly seem to get out of hand. Just today I got a message from someone who I thought was intelligent. She sent the "yahoo will close your account if you don't forward this lengthy message" IM. This seriously gets under my skin as I continually try to convince people that it is a hoax. :'( My friends don't believe me and I need a hug cause I think I'm having a nervous breakdown.
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This post is not associated in anyway with Slashdot. It is merely a poor representation of sarcasm, or irony, or a metaphor about how a beatiful woman is like a fine piece of jade... or something... You won't actually get a subscription to Slashdot and I might lose mine.
--
Was it the sheep climbing onto the altar, or the cattle lowing to be slain,
or the Son of God hanging dead and bloodied on a cross that told me this was a world condemned, but loved and bought with blood.
Not to mention that being on a Mac does not disqualify him from recieving the reward money for forwarding his messages. Bill told me so in his last email.
Hrrm... I usually just sign my name.
E-mail scams! Wait till my friend from Nigeria hears about this!
I never received much spam until that one day, someone I had emailed ONCE and LONG AGO, who obviously put me in her list of contacts (automatically or not), decided to forward a fake AMBER alert to the hundreds of people in her list, me being one.
I still rue the day I emailed her.
Hoaxes are not just powerful at getting a message across, but they can be amazingly powerful for spammers. Imagine spammers creating hoaxes that go out to 1,000,000 email addresses. Assuming 1% goes through and that each one of those people forwards to another 20 people will allow spammers to distribute a link to some product for free after the first 1,000,000. Also, this will take the legal strain off of the spammers themselves?
Are any companies currently doing this?
GroupShares Inc. - A Free and Interactive Stock Market Community
-------
artlu.net
This site has been both Slashdotted and Farked. I think we need to go inform the IT people at Wired that we offer them our condolences on the loss of their servers. Then again, they probably already know all about the problems, what with that burning smell...
Maybe they could sell the blackened chunks of silicon that used to be their servers on eBay, make back some of the loss.
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
As you can imagine it did our credibility no good whatsoever.
It is not just ignorant housewives and naive schoolkids who fall for these hoaxes...
Web Sig: Eddy Currents
I tell everyone, before they forward any of that crap, or virtually anything they deem worthy of sharing, they should first check it against the Urban Legends Reference Pages.
Of course it didn't concern me because I read my email with pine
Pine Message/External-Body Type Attribute Buffer Overflow Vulnerability [Sep 10, 2003]
Pine From: Field Buffer Overflow Vulnerability [Sep 23, 2000]
Pine 4.x Remote Command Execution Vulnerability [Jun 28, 1999]
it's in my head
I hate those hoax warnings, but this one is important! Send this
> > warning to everyone on your e-mail list!
> >
> > If someone comes to your front door saying they are conducting a survey
> > and asks you to take your clothes off, do not do it! This is a scam;
> > they only want to see you naked.
> >
> > I wish I'd gotten this yesterday. I feel so stupid and cheap now....
I can remember recieving this on Usenet! Long before 1997. Circa 1992 or so. I think they got the wrong guy. He may have started one, but the incarnation of this joke was FAR earlier.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
really, I mean jdbmgr.exe anyone? Look for the bear!!!
:)
And who would be stupid enough to believe a software company would make executables launch from within the email, or for that matter the header? What kind of buffoon software would ever do that...???
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
When they can r00t my QVT-102 terminal, I'll be impressed! (Especially since it's in the box in the basement right now.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
When this guy got the email, he sent an email to everyone previous asking if they had received any money.
When I used to get this email, I'd send an email to everyone previous asking them to not send stupid emails to every person in their address book. Usually I accompany it with:
- a brief explanation as to why it's stupid (the AOL/Intel/MS merger being unlikely)
- why there's no way they will get any money (MS is a business, not a charity)
- some basic math (do the financial return through three iterations - you, the guy who sent it to you, and the guy who sent it to him - assuming that you each sent it to precisely 20 people, then the guy who sent it to the guy who sent it to you will gain over $2-million)
- a request that they don't jam up the internet with more spam. The more people who send stupid emails, the more stupid emails in people's inbox, and the more traffic travelling through the mailservers.
- a caution about mass forwarding other people's email addresses ( if you hit forward, then everyone you forward it to gets my email address, unless you were smart enough to BCC it - that's likely hundreds or thousands of people that now have my email address... where before the number was less than a hundred)
Usually, I am able to send this 'educational' email to more than a hundred people at a time (due to everyone forwarding without using bcc).
I try to keep the tone stern, but not insulting. The idea is to make people feel stupid for being a part of the chain letter, not to insult them.
The end result: I don't get this email anymore.
In fact, I get less junk mail in general, and so do the people one iteration before me. By making the people who send me junk mail feel stupid for sending it, I've made them stop sending it.
Has anyone ever used these exploits to write a (Unix) virus?
I'm not sure about Pine, but Yes, mailer exploits did lead to a UNIX worm.
I sent it to the president & CEO of IBM (where I was working at the time), and my VP and a whole lot of other executives and co-workers. I was only fortunate that the guy that had the authority to fire me was on vacation at the time. oh. the stupidity
Oddly enough, it's Microsoft
www.facebook.com/DareDefendOurRights
www.fairtax.org
WASHINGTON, D.C.--The Institute for the Investigation of Irregular Internet Phenomena announced today that many Internet users are becoming infected by a new virus that causes them to believe without question every groundless story, legend, and dire warning that shows up in their inbox or on their browser. The Gullibility Virus, as it is called, apparently makes people believe and forward copies of silly hoaxes relating to cookie recipes, email viruses, taxes on modems, and get-rich-quick schemes.
"These are not just readers of tabloids or people who buy lottery tickets based on fortune cookie numbers," a spokesman said. "Most are otherwise normal people, who would laugh at the same stories if told to them by a stranger on a street corner." However, once these same people become infected with the Gullibility Virus, they believe anything they read on the Internet.
"My immunity to tall tales and bizarre claims is all gone," reported one weeping victim. "I believe every warning message and sick child story my friends forward to me, even though most of the messages are anonymous."
Another victim, now in remission, added, "When I first heard about Good Times, I just accepted it without question. After all, there were dozens of other recipients on the mail header, so I thought the virus must be true." It was a long time, the victim said, before she could stand up at a Hoaxees Anonymous meeting and state, "My name is Jane, and I've been hoaxed." Now, however, she is spreading the word. "Challenge and check whatever you read," she says.
Internet users are urged to examine themselves for symptoms of the virus, which include the following:
the willingness to believe improbable stories without thinking the urge to forward multiple copies of such stories to others a lack of desire to take three minutes to check to see if a story is true T. C. is an example of someone recently infected. He told one reporter, "I read on the Net that the major ingredient in almost all shampoos makes your hair fall out, so I've stopped using shampoo." When told about the Gullibility Virus, T. C. said he would stop reading email, so that he would not become infected. Anyone with symptoms like these is urged to seek help immediately. Experts recommend that at the first feelings of gullibility, Internet users rush to their favorite search engine and look up the item tempting them to thoughtless credence. Most hoaxes, legends, and tall tales have been widely discussed and exposed by the Internet community.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The story is a dupe, the topic is boring, the facts weren't checked. WE GET IT!!
Some genius was inventing indentation by use of the > symbol. Little did he know that we'd all be surfing greater-than "waves" for the next millenium and a half.
>
> >
> > >
> > > >
> > > > >surf's up!
> > > >
> > >
> >
>
stuff |
I got the Bill Gates email from a friend around Thanksgiving of 1997. We made fun of my him for sending it around, but he reasoned "it's probably not true, but it's worth the 2 seconds to send it in case it is."
So when I got back to school after Thanksgiving break I forged the headers in my email to write a message "from" Bill Gates to my friend. The message thanked him for participating in the study and gave him instructions for collecting his $1000. All he had to do was send a self addressed stamped envelope to Microsoft with a letter containing his name and a confirmation number.
Over a year passed by and I never brought it up to my friend. I think it was around Christmas of '98 when we were all home again from college and hanging out when someone brought up the Bill Gates email hoax.
My friend said, "Did I ever tell you guys what happened with that? I got an email saying I won the money, so I followed the instructions and sent back a self addressed stamped envelope, but Microsoft just sent the envelope back to me. I guess it wasn't real, but it was worth the 37 cents just in case it was real."
I finally told him what happened after I laughed for about ten minutes.
OddManIn: A Game of guns and game theory.
It's too bad that more hoax "victims" don't get this one...
> Greetings, You have just received the "IRISH VIRUS".
> As we don't have any programming experience, this Virus
> works on the honour system. Please delete all the files
> on your hard drive manually and forward this Virus to
> everyone on your mailing list. Thank you for your cooperation.
Confidence is the feeling you have before you understand the situation.
What is Bryan's email address?
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
To the moderator who mods me up as insightful...
This account has been seized by the GNAA. That is all.
You're the idiot, Annonymous Coward.
My quick search of Google Groups seems to support the idea that it showed up in November of 1997. Search for "Bill Gates $1000" before Nov. 1997 and the hoax doesn't show up. Then do the same search before Dec. 1997 and a bunch of things start popping up, such as this thread where someone asks if the hoax has been seen prior to 25 Nov 97 and gets no reply showing a previous occurrence. Here is another message indicating that it was defnitely hot in Dec 1997 (the poster complains about repeatedly getting it).
Not proof, but likeliness of the story's truth.
Jonathon Keats seems to be a published author with a book on Amazon and everything... who knows if he's also Jon Katz.
He's being facetious - it's mock-seriousness in the bulk of the article.
The article wasn't simply pointing out that this letter was a hoax, but got to the bottom of it and found the origin of something the rest of us were sure was lost in the mists of email forwarding.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Send $5 to the 5 names on this list, then put your name at the top, remove that last entry, and send it to 5 of your friends.
I forgot where I read that (maybe even here), but here goes anyway:
Imagine that combined with penis enlargment spam. Cut your penis into 5 parts, send each part to top 5 names on the list.. receive more penis in the mail! Guaranteed to add inches and inches to your penis!
I wrote it over 7 years ago for my web site, posted it to a couple of humor newsgroups to get some promo. Someone stripped my intro, sent it to a couple of humor lists with the claim it was real, and it exploded.
Sadly, my Shit Nickels Fast chain letter parody did not do as well.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
Google's new email offering, gmail, is what everyone's talking about! And people are confused about Google's "tracking" of the messages you send and putting ads on it.
So a letter that explains that Google's testing a new email system (true!) and that they're using their search technology to track emails would be beleived by enough people to make a new round of this chain letter spread even faster than it ever had!
C'mon /. folks! Here's a challenge! Write a letter and sent it to a dozen of your most gullible friends!
Best Buy can have you arrested
A funny story about that..
As soon as I heard about it I sent an email to a girl I know who has a horrible tendancy to believe these things explaining that it was a hoax. The following conversation ensued.
First, the important back end to the punchline: Her comptuer at the time was an old Compaq Presario, 200mhz, 32 megs of RAM, and Windows95
Her: I deleted that file
Me: I told you it was a hoax
Her: Yeah but I had the file on my computer!
(I decide to take this and run with it)
Me: I told you it was a hoax for a reason, now if you shut your computer down you aren't going to be able to start it back up again.
(she signs off and isn't seen online again for about a week)
Her: Colin am I ever going to be able to turn off my computer?
She BELIEVED me and actually left her dinosaur Win95 box running for a week straight. I was surprised after running that long she was able to get on to AOL 6.0 and IM me without the system falling to its knees in a spectacular stream of 30 BSODs.
Stupid is as stupid does I guess
...and that's all there is to it.
I don't have that file. I got an email that told me to delete it, so I did. So far so .~ ^.8 . ++++[carrier lost]
Where do I get one of these modems that writes [carrier lost] into web forum posts before it disconnects? It seems like everyone has one but me... or maybe it's done at the ISP level!?.
Dewey, you fool! Your decimal system has played right into my hands!
Excuse me, I'm an engineer with QUME, can you plug your terminal in to a phone line for a sec? We've had some reports of leaky capacitors detabilizing the electron gun on your CRT that could cause sterility, it's something we can fix and patch remotely.
What's your number again?
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
Back in the olden days, modems would indeed send NO CARRIER, and many BBSi would cheerfully record it.
Many people didn't set their modems with appropriate timeout space before and after +++, so you could do goofy things like drop the server's modem into command mode (because it faithfully echoed your keystrokes) by doing that. As I recall, some modems even acknowledged the +++ when it was received from remote, so you could have even more fun by embedding +++ATH0 or worse commands into your messages.
There were all sorts of fun things to do with Hayes-compat modems, Back In The Day.
Slashdot's token middle-aged housewife