Eradicate chain mails once and for all

To:  Internet users

Often we receive one of those emails in our inbox informing us of a malpractice, alerting us of a malicious intent against other fellow humans, making sure we are careful, angry and active citizens who care for our fellow human. How many times though have we questioned those seemingly caring and considerate messages, how many times have we stepped back to consider are they really true, what is the motives behind those?

I am of course talking about chail email hoaxes. A lot of you will be familiar with the needle poking out of a cinema seat injecting an innocent girl with HIV, or Bill Gates sharing his fortune or the 'Bonsai Kittens' where kittens are fed muscle relaxants and put in a jar to take the shape of it. Most often the hoaxes that actually reach our inboxes are the well-constructed ones that look very realistic.

How can we be sure they are telling the truth or not you might ask. This is where your own informed judgement is your best ally. Do not take anything as the truth without passing them through your own judgement. Thankfully nowadays we have a number of internet search engines at our disposal. Almost always a quick search for two or three keywords from the email are sufficient to reveal a number of sites and articles exposing the hoax.

It is our natural tendency as humans to care and that gets exploited and carefully manipulated in these hoaxes. They appear very realistic (otherwise they would have never reached your inboxes), they are most often outrageous, causing anger and frustration as the gut reaction and then calling for the email to be forwarded!

What's the motive behind that? That I do not know. Maybe to cause unnessecary internet traffic, maybe an attempt to expose valuable working email addresses later used for spam (as most people fail to obscure the email addresses of their recipients).

For this I ask you to sign my petition and to pledge the following:

I, the undersigned, pledge not to forward another chain email that will come into my inbox without first researching it myself and using my critical mind to discover the truth. I am also glad to be part of the people who helped eradicate the chain mail phenomenon once and for all.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

The Eradicate chain mails once and for all Petition to Internet users was created by and written by Tom Koukoulis (eradicate.hoaxes@gmail.com).  This petition is hosted here at www.PetitionOnline.com as a public service. There is no endorsement of this petition, express or implied, by Artifice, Inc. or our sponsors. For technical support please use our simple Petition Help form.