ka@cs.washington.edu (Kenneth Almquist) (02/10/90)
There is a chain letter scheme which has apparently been floating around on bulletin board systems for a while, and has just appeared on USENET for the second time. In summary, the scheme involves sending $1.00 to each of five names on a list, deleting the top name from the list, and adding your name to the bottom. The scheme allegedly originated as a postal scam, and was transferred to electronic bulletin boards by someone named Dave Rhodes. In a rather transparent attempt to avoid postal laws, the letter tells the receiver of the money record the names of the senders and construct a mailing list. If you want to read the full thing, see article <2142@ultb.isc.rit.edu>. The first time that the chain letter appeared, several people posted to the net saying that they had contacted postal authorities or the FBI, and the system administrator shortly announced that he had eliminated the offender's account. At least one person has notified postal authorities about the recent posting. Are there other things that we should be doing? For example, should we add a warning about chain letter scams to the USENET documentation? Kenneth Almquist
bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) (02/27/90)
>The first time that the chain letter appeared, several people posted >to the net saying that they had contacted postal authorities or the >FBI, and the system administrator shortly announced that he had >eliminated the offender's account. At least one person has notified >postal authorities about the recent posting. > >Are there other things that we should be doing? For example, should >we add a warning about chain letter scams to the USENET documentation? > Kenneth Almquist Does anyone have any indication that even one person ever fell for a USENET chain letter scam? (don't tell me about dumb hicks(tm) who fall for these things from time to time, not even sure how many of those are left out there.) Perhaps we're overreacting a tad, are you sure all this sound and fury is for anything? Without a victim perhaps it's sufficient to just go tell the guy's system admin and leave it at that if it's not repeated. Why all the vindictiveness? Because there might exist someone so dumb they'll send a dollar (A DOLLAR) out? The messages raving about these things have cost everyone on the net far more, and are sent to a helluva lot more than five people. -- -Barry Shein Software Tool & Die | {xylogics,uunet}!world!bzs | bzs@world.std.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202 | Login: 617-739-WRLD