Please forward or send on this page to all your friends

M Holmes fofp at HOLYROOD.ED.AC.UK
Fri May 22 06:45:23 EDT 1998


Nick English writes:

> > "Please forward and send this page to everyone you know to help out this
> > little girl"
>
> > <A HREF="http://www.geocities.com/EnchantedForest/Tower/3756/">
> > http://www.geocities.com/EnchantedForest/Tower/3756/</A>
> >
> > Please Help This Page Get 500,000 hits.
>
>
> Not to say I think this is a sham, but it reminds me of a chain
> e-mail letter I got not too long ago. The guy said there was some kid
> dying from something at a children's hospital in Pittsburgh, and the
> hospital agreed to donate so much money for his treatment based on
> how many people received the chain letter. At the bottom it had a
> quote, supposedly from the gravely ill kid, saying something to the
> effect that what comes around goes around, and if I refused to simply
> send the letter to five or ten friends and 'help' this kid, then
> somewhere down the line I would get what's coming to me.
> I replied the sender, saying that I would never help a little brat
> like that, no matter what was wrong with him, and I hoped he just got
> sicker because of it. Sounds pretty heartless, but I just do not in
> any way believe this message was real, and I was quite offended by
> it. Anyone else ever receive a letter like this?

Then there's the Craig Shergold danger. This was a true story of a kid
dying of cancer in Britain. It started with ordinary chain mail asking
for business cards to cheer him up. Then the internet took off. Craig is
a live and well adult now. His parents however are still receiving three
sackfulls of business letters per day despite appeals for this to stop.
The Post Office opened a special substation to deal with their mail
alone.

No matter how often someone points this out on the Net, the message
always gets to a newbie who never heard of Craig Shergold and who
doesn't read FAQs. Then he send it to ten frineds and they send it to
ten friends and before you know it there's another sackful in the post
for Mr and Mrs Shergold.

We've made it a breach of 'Puting Regs here to send on chain mail, with
a possible loss of account.

> --  Nick

FoFP



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