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Forward This Article And Get Paid $203.15
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."
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)
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)
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.
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!
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
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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....
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.
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.
It must be a hell of an accent if it changes the spelling too! Zowie!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
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.
When did Wired get a swimsuit issue?
You're the idiot, Annonymous Coward.
Don't kill him yet, I still need to collect $23,000 from him.
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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."
I don't think it's spelled the way you think it's spelled.
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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!