Chain Letters

What in the world is so appealing about chain letters? At the best, they are slightly cute or touching, but most people who receive chain emails end up just deleting them without reading them. However, the downside of those chain emails is huge.

Even without any of the hidden dangers of email, chain emails take up enormous amounts of space and bandwidth on the internet that could be used for other things. Ever have an email that takes a day or two to get from point A to point B? Spam emails and chain letters are the reason. Servers can only handle so much data at a time, so when there's a flood of email coming in or going out, that server has to process all of that information in sequence. Of course, if we didn't have so much spam, this wouldn't be a problem, right? So why can't we do anything about the amount of spam we are receiving? That's right - chain letters.

While chain letters can't be blamed for all spam, they can be blamed for a significant chunk of it. Spammers get email addresses to send spam to by harvesting email addresses from websites and distribution lists. However, why should they worry about doing the work when so many people are willing to do the work for them? Every time that you forward an email, all of the emails that it was sent to before are included in the email that you send. While that usually doesn't mean much, forward an email a dozen times and you have a list of hundreds of emails if not thousands. More than likely, that email will be forwarded to a spammer or someone who will take that list and sell those emails to a spammer.

That's not the only danger though. While many chain letters are started with innocent intentions, some are not. Every time that a cute picture or sound file is attached to an email, it is an opportunity to hide malicious code that can destroy your files, fill your computer with junk, turn your computer into a zombie slave distributing spam, steal your personal information, or a number of other creative ways to mess up your day.

So next time that you get a cute forward, don't send it on. If you want to share it, that's fine; print it out or show someone on your own computer. Don't spread the infection.