(Logo and goto: Prof. Timo Salmi, Department of Accounting and Finance, University of Vaasa, Finland)
(A thumbnail photo of Timo Salmi)
<http://lipas.uwasa.fi/~ts/http/chainlet.html>
Copyright © 1990-2006 by Prof. Timo Salmi
Last modified Mon 15-May-2006 19:25:02
      (Visits counter image) Counting since 5.11.2005
Prof. Timo Salmi [Offline] Prof. Timo Salmi Department of Accounting and Finance [Offline] Department of Accounting and Finance University of Vaasa, Finland [Offline] WWW root level
(FAQ)[Offline]

How should I react to chain letters?

(oooo)

Originally from
ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/link/tsfaqn.zip
Questions from Usenet and Timo's answers

Most importantly: Never, ever continue a chain letter!

Especially in the early days before the deluge of spam (Unsolicited Commercial Email, UCE) started, make money fast chain letter schemes and their derivatives were the foremost abuse of the Usenet news. But the occasional chain letters still appear as a nuisance on the net. Not only are they against the netiquette, but they are outright illegal in many countries. That they appear on the net does not alter this fact in any way! For example for the U.S. see

ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pub/pc/doc-net/chain.txt
About chain letters, from the U.S. postmaster general
 
ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/doc-net/chain2.txt
More on chain letters, written by R. Scott Perry
These scams come in many variations on the net. If you are a newcomer to the Usenet news, don't do anything about it. In particular do not become another offender by continuing the chain. Many system administrators are quite fed up with this form of abuse. They often will cancel the culprit's computer account without further ado.

If you are an experienced user, you may want to notify the relevant postmaster or abuse address. First find out where the posting or email really came from, since the sender's address often is forged. For example, you might use a service like SpamCop for the task. If you decide to send an abuse notification, please bear in mind a few obvious things. 1) Copy the full headers of the posting for her/him. The scam postings often are forgeries just to annoy the net. The full headers make it a bit easier to try asses this. 2) Consider deleting most of the body of the chain-letter scam, if it serves no informative purpose. 3) Be polite and to the point.

If you are a less experienced reader one thing you should not do is to follow up the chain letter with a furious flame in the newsgroup(s) believing that the perpetrator will see it. There is a good chance that the origin is forged. Most importantly do not go and quote the entire chain letter, or other offending material, in your followup on the affected newsgroup. That will just compound the abuse and make you a party of the felony, especially, since some users use such guises to post the chain letters. (Abuse reports in the proper channels are a natural exception.)

(Links) In this day and age there is a lot of information available by WWW, also about chain letters and other prevalent scams such as the Nigerian Advance Fee 419 Scam. The disadvantage here is that there is no guarantee how long the links will stay current, but here are some pointers: There are a number of Usenet newsgroups which have more information on errant behavior on the net:

[To Timo's FAQ materials index page ]
 
[ts(a)uwasa.fi ] [Photo ] [Programs ] [FAQs ] [Research ] [Lectures ] [Department: main  links ] [Faculty ] [University ]
 
[Revalidate]