GUARANTEE NOT 1 OF MY FACEBOOK FRIEND WILL COPY THIS POST…IF YOU WOULD BE THERE FOR ME THEN COPY THIS…I AM DOING THIS TO PROVE A FRIEND WRONG THAT SOMEONE IS ALWAYS LISTENIN

–Facebook Troll

The earliest documented chain letter (that google provided me with) is from 1888, if this isn’t true… I really could care less, I just thought I’d start this post of with some history. Daniel W. VanArsdale encouraged the recipients of the chain letter to donate a dime to the education of poor children in the Cumberlands region of Tennessee, and then instructed the recipient to forward the letter to four friends. People back then had an excuse, chain letters were new. How could you not fulfill such a simple and genuine request. Just send this to 4 of my friends? Why this sounds like a marvelous cause, I surely will!

Welcome to 2011 folks… people are still doing this. Not just every now and then… CONSTANTLY. I’ve actually met some people that use the internet for nothing other than e-mail. They don’t even know how to browse websites. The only way they can find anything on the web, is if someone sends them an email that has a link to a site. It’s scary, I know, but it’s true… and there are more of these people out there than you may realize. When these types of people get a chain letter e-mail, they typically take it seriously, just as the ignorant masses did in 1888. In this age of communication, the number of chain letters that one of these mindless e-mail only users can forward in one day… is staggering. In fact it’s such a problem in today’s society… Weird Al even wrote a song about it…

The e-mail only users out there aren’t the only ones responsible for the plague of spam chain letters that get sent out. Some people do this for fun. They think up some sort of ridiculous story and send it out to everyone they know, along with a threat about what will happen if you don’t pass the message along. These folks are just trouble makers, and it’s sad that they find amusement in such pointless activities…

The last group of people are the insecure forwarders. They fall for the threat in the chain letter, and don’t want any harm to come to themselves or their loved ones, so they forward the message along for fear of the threat actually happening, or that the person that sent the message will think badly of them for not doing as they were told. To all of these people, I ask that you please grow a pair, and try using a little critical thinking before clicking send. You’re just a smidge above the e-mail only users, please stop embarassing yourselves.

So what is the problem? Why do I feel it’s necessary to speak out against this plague, if it’s really all so harmless? Here’s a few points, and I’m sure I could come up with more if I really sat here thinking about it long enough:

• Security – If you are sending out mass emails of chain letters, chances are that you aren’t aware of the potential security issues you’re passing along to your friends and family. Some of these chain letter e-mails contain malicious code that can infect a recipient’s machine. Things like viruses, spyware, malware… are spread like wild fire from users that pass along these types of messages. If there is a link or file attached to the message DON’T PASS IT ALONG!!!
• Security Part II – Aside from that, whenever you forward an email to a bunch of people, if you’re putting the addresses of your recipients in the “To” field… everyone that receives that email, will be able to see everyone else’s email address that the message was sent to. Not only that, but when the recipient forwards the message along to the next group of people, all of the e-mail addresses you sent the message to, will be forwarded along with it. If anyone at any point in the e-mail chain has a virus that grabs e-mail addresses from your e-mail… you just handed all of your contacts over to a hacker… GREAT JOB!
• Bandwidth – Many chain letter e-mails will have lots of pictures or perhaps a video attached. In some cases, these files can be massive… If you use a mobile phone to check your e-mail, you probably have a cap on the amount of bandwidth you can use per month. If you get hit with a “these cats are hilarious” e-mail… you could spend the next 30 minutes downloading the huge attachments, and eating up all of your bandwidth. There are still folks using dialup too (poor bastards), and I’ve seen some chain letters take HOURS to download on a 56k modem. I have one client that has called me no less than 4 times within a month’s time span, to ask my why her e-mail was broken. I had to explain each time that it wasn’t broken… she was just downloading a huge message with tons of attachments…
• WASTE OF TIME – Even deleting messages takes time… the best way to save time is to not receive the chain letter in the first place
• The Endless E-Mail Sea – If you get bombarded with chain letter like status updates, or e-mail, you’re going to miss out on information that may have actually been interesting…

So if you’re one of the people responsible for this garbage floating around on the internet, please stop and/or punch yourself in the face for spreading poop all over the internet. If you want to send chain letters, fine, but please do so using the regular mail system. The United States Postal System is broke as a joke because nobody uses it anymore. Give them a new lease on life, and send your idiotic ramblings via snail mail. You’ll be doing the country a solid, and I will have a convenient way of completely ignoring all of it.

If you want to copy and paste something to your friends, help end this digital cancer by linking to this post:

“Please copy & paste this to your status if you are constantly being asked to copy & paste something to your status by friends who copy & paste things to their status. Many people won’t copy & paste this but my true friends will copy & paste it because they know this was copied & pasted from a dear friend in need of more stuff to copy & paste…thank you! And don’t forget the heart… ♥
Help end the digital cancer: http://www.theparaverse.com/blog/?p=296
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