This is a small matter but one that I felt had to be included somewhere in this document. Many days do we all receive that chain letter in our email inbox. Just like when you receive them at home, you are expected to forward them to a certain number of people if you don’t want to have bad luck.

Often these emails tell you that some person ignored their chain letter and they had been hit by a car or something, and that those who sent the email won the lottery or something like that. These emails are also spam.

I don’t know of one person that had bad luck simply by ignoring the chain letter. Actually their luck improved because the spammers stopped sending that particular email. There was one particular spam e-mail that is used quite a bit and it gets more and more popular by the day. It works similar to a chain letter.

This email is sent by a lawyer that insists that the email is a promotion for Microsofts Bill Gates. It basically states that if you send the email to as many people as you can you will receive a check from Microsoft for helping them with their promotion.

It also states that you receive a check that is bigger if the people you send the emails to send them to others. Of course it then tells you that if it is a scam, what have you really lost, but that if its true, you can earn some money.

No matter what your chain letters say, DO NOT OPEN THEM! They are lies. By forwarding these types of emails, you are helping the spammers get even more viable email addresses. And since you are forwarding them to your friends, you have just allowed the spammers to get their claws on them too. Your friends will not thank you.

THE PLEAS FROM DOWN AND OUT STRANGERS

You have to admire the spammers interest in pulling at the heart strings in order to get your attention. These are the emails that come from strangers that are from some foreign country who are just looking for donations from kind people so that they can finish college or get an operation they desperately need.

These emails are always extremely polite and come from seemingly educated individuals who just need help to make their dreams come true. People must be falling for it since they are still coming out in full force.

You must beware of these pleas for help because they are generally just spam scams. Think about it, how desperate can these people be for money if they can afford to mass email complete strangers? I don’t know any person who is that poor but can afford a computer and the internet. Do you ever notice that none of these people even give you a viable home address?

Anyway, this is just a sample of a spam scam, there will be more on this in the next section.