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Written by Tony Phelps
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Thursday, 17 November 2005 |
Just about everyone who has an email account will have received chain
email – an email that has been passed on from person to person dozens
if not hundreds of times. Such an email is not as harmless as it seems.
Most of the time, a chain email plays on human feelings &
superstition, for example it may say you will have good luck if you
forward it to more people (or bad luck if you don’t). It may say a sick
child will be encouraged the more the email is sent round. There are
those that say you will be paid according to how many people you
forward it to, or that you can get free phones or other gadgets. There
are even religious chain emails promising blessings, and many times
these include large attachments.
Unfortunately, these emails end up being sent around the world in such
numbers that they slow everyone down, and we hardly need our Vanuatu
internet links to go even slower. They are also false, just frauds
started by small-minded people who like to see a simple email get
copied & forwarded millions of times. It is simple maths that if
each person forwards an email to just a few more, there are very
quickly astronomical numbers. If someone in Vanuatu started a chain
email and sent it to 6 people, and those 6 people each sent it to 6
more, and they did the same, it would take only 6 times before everyone
in Port Vila had it, and by the 7th “forward” everyone in Vanuatu would
have it! After 11 times, everyone in the USA would have it, and after
13, every person on the planet would have it twice.
Of course, it never quite works that way in reality, but it is easy to
see that chain emails are not good for the internet. Everyone with an
email account can help stop this nuisance by thinking very carefully
before forwarding email – send only if you are sure the receivers will
really want to see the email, and if there is a large attachment, think
about how much it will cost to both send and then receive it (TVL
charges by the minute for dialup customers, and by file size in &
out for permanent connections). |
