Vkreeth
Posts 2
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The "chain e-mail" is the electronic version of the "chain letter" of old (and is well defined in Wikipedia). Chain e-mails can be used to propagate one’s political or religious views. A very few of them are ever informational. The one thing that all types of chain e-mail have in common is that they play on the recipient’s emotions and/or beliefs to pass the e-mail on.
A good many are hoaxes. In the past, there have been several chain e-mails that say that the e-mail would be tracked and you would get money from Microsoft depending on the number people you send it to. Currently, there is no way of tracking an e-mail. Most of the hoaxes that come across my desk (or monitor) are about viruses. If you get a chain e-mail that says to delete a certain file off your computer because of whatever reason, NEVER do that. It’s a good chance that when you reboot, Windows will not load and you will need to reimage your machine. A good source for finding out if the chain e-mail is a hoax is to look it up in www.Snopes.com or www.TruthorFiction.com on the web. If it’s about a virus, you can go to any of the anti-virus companies and do a search there for the virus name. It’s a good bet that it’ll actually be a virus, but it will be so old that it’s covered in all scans.
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