From: "Kristen Baker" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
| Please stop fighting, if you have anything to say please e-mail it to me
| privatly... and if you don't like what I post then delte it!
|
Agreed, Kristen. We've said almost enough. (I'm sorry to see your
remorseless and belligerent attitude again, however. You never even
acknowledged your original subject, "Off Topic".)
But ... I'm gonna' explain why chain letters and pyramid schemes are so
obnoxious, and illegal in most places. Maybe you didn't know, Kristen.
I'll bet some others don't either so I'll do this publicly rather than in
private email to you.
The person or persons who originated that letter is a con artist. The
scam is at least as old as snail mail. That particular email has been
going around a long time -- I think I saw that exact one a couple times
a couple years ago. And I got it as spam, from someone I didn't know.
Let's say Person1 gets the email and sends his/her $6 ($1 to each person
on the list). And Person1 gets 6 more people to sign on, and so do they
... etc. If that all works perfectly, then Person 1 will received
$24,637,758 as he progresses upwards on the list. Yes -- more than $24
MILLION. So that means MANY more than 24 million emails did and are
circulating as the chain grew.
Let's just look at Person1 -- who has done very little and collected $24
million. Each of the $1 bills sent came from somewhere, so 24 million
people have contributed to his nice fortune.
Now think of the millions of people listed as #2 on those oceans of emails
at this point. If the chain is working they will each receive
331,776 -- and will be expecting $24,300,000 after the next stage when
they are listed as #1.
Do I need to remind you that the population of the US (men, women and
children) isn't much more than 250 million.
Fortunately the "pyramid scheme" has collapsed before that point. So
what's the harm? All those hopeful people who sent off $6 and will get
less than that in return. Usually they get zero.
The spam email you posted has a couple particularly nasty streaks.
** It tells you to post it in 200 newsgroups. Please stop to think if
everyone did that. Suppose just the 180 members of GML did so, without
duplicating each other. That would take 200 x 180 = 360,000 newsgroups.
Even your email doesn't claim that there are that many.
** It claims that this is legal. I haven't checked the Postal Regulation
that it says covers it, but I'll guess what it says. It says that this
kind of chain letter is permissible if you are engaged in a business. So
the chain letter hints that you had better be claiming that you are
collecting a list of email addresses (24,000,000 of them) to sell to
companies. Are you really going to do that? Is any company ever going to
buy your addresses, even thought every person on it is a proven sucker?
Will I kill you if you sell MY name to a company so I can get uninvited
advertising?
All of that is why the spam "Off Subject" posting got such a hot response.
I hope everyone who didn't quite see the harm now understands.
