

How Did That Chain Letter Get To My Inbox? - blogimus
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=111580&org=NSF&from=news

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tlrobinson
The ones that require the recipient to forward the letter for one reason or
another drive me nuts. Like this totally useless one I got recently (hint:
there's nothing wrong).

    
    
        What's wrong here
    
        AAA
        BBB
        CCC
        DDD

_< snip>_

    
    
        XXX
        YYY
        ZZZ
    
        Did you know that 80% of UCSD students could not find
        the error above? Repost this with the title "what's 
        wrong here", and when you click "Forward ", the answer
        will be really obvious.
    

The worst thing is we're seeing the EXACT SAME THING in disguise as social-
viral-loop-Facebook-app nonsense. "Your friend rated you! To see the results,
rate 10 friends first!"

And I wonder why I stopped using Facebook soon after they launched the app
platform...

~~~
blogimus
This is a great simple example of social engineering.

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pmjordan
In my experience, those chain letter emails almost always came from my mum.
;-) At least until I asked her to stop forwarding them to me.

Seriously though, I haven't had one of those for what must be years. Are they
still going strong and I just happen to be spared? Or is all of this stuff
happening on Facebook, etc. these days? (By the time Facebook was open for me
to register, its appeal was gone, so I never did. There's a story there but
I'll leave that for another day.)

~~~
blogimus
I experience the same thing as I haven't gotten many chain letters in a long
time. This is due, I think, to two things:

1) I trained my family to either stop emailing this stuff or stop emailing me
this stuff. I would do a quick search on the topic which usually ended up with
sending everyone a quick sentence asking to read the snopes article I linked.

2) I am in a different social network that is insulated from the "main stream"
social networks (I'm just saying different, no more no less). The people who
are connected between networks are my filters. I assume that most of them are
literate enough to stop forwarding this junk from one group to another. There
was a technology magazine article I scanned a while back which explained
visualizing social networks that better illustrated what I have feebly
described.

~~~
JacobAldridge
Have to agree. I used to reply (basically) "You're an idiot, here's a snopes
link explaining why".

When that didn't work, I used Reply All, which basically added "and now I've
told all your friends that you're an idiot".

Haven't received a forward in a long, long time...also have a lot less email-
only 'friends'.

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run4yourlives
I used to get a lot of this crap then I did the following:

1\. I did a "reply all" (Everyone address is always in the To or Cc with these
things) and asked very nicely that people stop sending me "chain mails and
other jokes".

2\. I wrote a giant email about how chain mails are basically for idiots and
sat and waited for the first person to ignore my nice email. When that
happened in a day or two, I did another "reply all" and emailed my
dissertation out 50 times.

3\. I did that once more to a different chainmail.

I've never received a chainmail or other retarded email since. :-)

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tlrobinson
Jon Kleinberg... he's the guy who wrote my graduate algorithms course
textbook. And reportedly did the research that eventually inspired PageRank.

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goofygrin
I'm not sure what's worse.

1\. That I get these emails

or

2\. That the gooberment spent probably $3million for this "research"

