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Further Adventures in Email Tracking
Dateline: 08/12/98 (Updated: 10/16/98)
Is anybody not tracking email these days?
From Bill Gates to "Walt Disney Jr.," everybody's got a chain letter going
that promises to reward obedient forwarders with big bucks. Bill Gates
offers $1,000... Disney, $5,000.
That's not bad dough just for clicking your "Forward" button, but why
mess around with small change when you can make millions by following
the instructions below?
Fwd: You have to read this. It's so cool.
Need some extra $$$ for the summer? Sure we all
do. This program has been going on for 15
summers, by mail, then e-mail. It is really
very simple. Attached to this message is a
tracking program. Every person you send this
message to, you earn $10.00. If they send it to
someone else, you earn another $5.00, so on and
so on. So basically, the more people you send
this to, the more $$$ you will earn. This is
funded by National Banks everywhere, that
believe that summers should be fun for
children, the world's future and should learn
how to manage $$$.
Real stories:
"Okay, I was 19 when I received this
letter two summers ago. I was just starting up
my own DJ business, and I needed some extra
money to get my business started. So I thought,
'What the heck, I'll send it to my friends. I
sent it to only 10 of my friends, who each sent
it to their friends. I never send these
letters, because I don't believe in them. The
next month, I received a check for $500.00 in
the mail. Now my DJ business is well known
throughout Kentucky, and I've had a great life,
ever since I sent this to my 10 friends. All it
took was five minutes!" Russell Way man, age 21
"I received this letter ten years ago. I
had just gotten my e-mail account, and I hated
these letters I kept getting, so I deleted this
message. In a week, my mother came down with a
serious case of skin cancer. I was pretty poor
at the time, and had just gotten fired from my
job. My mother needed money for her operation,
or else she'd die from cancer. My husband and I
didn't know what to do. His monthly income just
paid our necessary bills, like electricity and
water. That day, when I checked my e-mail
again, this same letter had been sent to me
again. My mom was about to die, so I decided
I'd try anything. So that day I sent it out to
100 people I had met online, and my friends. My
mother had been moved into critical condition,
and was at the brink of death. A week later, I
received a check in the mail for $1,000,000.00,
enough money for my mothers operation. She is
well now, thanks to this letter." Sarah
Thomasman, age 43
As you can see, all you need to do, is send
this out to as many people as you can. From a
week to a month later, you will receive a check
in the mail for a certain amount of money,
depending on how many people you sent it to,
and who they sent it to. Good luck, and await
the check!
"Good luck" indeed, because that check is never going to arrive. "National
Banks everywhere" are not giving away billions of dollars to senders of
chain email. The very idea that a scheme like this would teach children
"how to manage $$$" is laughable – which all on its own ought to have
clued recipients in to the fact that this is a hoax.
As usual, the promise of easy money seems to have short-circuited a lot of
people's brains.
"Attached to this message is a tracking program..."
Like all chain letters, this one a tiresome waste of time and bandwidth, etc.,
etc. But from a Net folklorist's point of view the text stands out from most
others of its kind for this reason: it's the latest iteration of an Internet myth
called "email tracking" – in this context, the supposed capacity, using
special software, to monitor the path of any message through multiple
forwards by an ever-increasing number of senders to an ever-increasing
number of recipients.
To my knowledge, no such software exists. It is, however, a handy fiction
for Net pranksters, who rely on these sorts of "social engineering" ideas to
dupe users into replicating their handiwork.
In the present case, the "attached" tracking program is the mechanism by
which whoever is running the scheme will supposedly determine how many
times the message has been forwarded. It lends a bit of surface credibility
to the plan... so long as you don't stop to think about the fact that the
message bore no attachment of any kind when you got it.
Besides which, file attachments don't do anything unless executed by the
recipient. It's a testament to how technically unsophisticated many of us are
that we take mumbo-jumbo like this on faith.
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