BreakTheChain.org
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Tragedy at Wal-MartDate Added: July 5, 2004
Just when we thought the e-mail tracking hoax was dead, along comes this imaginitive and heartwrenching - yet no more likely true - tear-jerker about a boy, his sister and a miracle that needs your help. A sister and her brother were inside the new Walmart built in town. The sister at six years of age, the brother seventeen years of age. The brother was fixing to buy a present for his little sister on her birthday, but as soon as they were fixing to leave she had to go to the bathroom. Her brother showed her where it was, he started to look at some earrings she would probably like for her next birthday. As he started to buy them he saw people running from the end of the store screaming and yelling with fear. Before he new it he smelled smoke and saw fire, he ran to his little sister as fast as he could but when he got to the bathrooms they were already on fire. He new he had to get out as fast as he could to get help. But when the firetrucks arrived it was already to late. Two days later the family got a call from the hospital saying they have someone there by the name of sandy. They asked "How did you get this number"? The hospital said she was holding a purse in her hand with a card that said her name and number on it. The family drove to the hospital to see thier little angel. While they looked at her, they noticed her arm was almost all the way burnt off, and her face was so burned it needed surgery. But the family didnt have enough to cover the bill. So now the need you to help out!! Note: Every time you send this to three people aol will take away $2.00 off the hospital bill. DO NOT DELETE! AOL IS TRACKING THIS This is the latest update of an old formula: a kid is in trouble, the family needs money and a huge corporation will help them out if you forward this e-mail. It wasn't true for baby Natalie, Debbie Shwartz, Rachel Arlington or any of the other fictional kids-in-peril used to dupe good-hearted folks into perpetrating this hoax. This one pulls out all the stops to get folks to forward it: a badly burned little girl, a loving brother and very visible corporate giants like Wal-Mart and AOL. The story is compelling, but there is no reason to believe it - nor anyway to prove it true or false. It's an anonymous, third-person account with no names, locations, date or anything that would help us validate it. Searches on the Internet for the terms "Wal-Mart," "Fire" and "Sandy" fail to turn up any reports of such a miraculous survival, which one might expect to see if it were true. Not that any of this is important, since what the letter promises is impossible. There is currently no technology to reliably track an e-mail in the manner described above. Not even Internet giant AOL could undertake such a project - nor would they. Organizations rarely, if ever, make charitable contributions dependent on the actions of the general public. And they certainly wouldn't pin a little girl's fate on such a poorly written piece of drivel. Often, we forward chains like this "just in case." We're afraid to delete it because it could be true, so we pass it on thinking "what can it hurt." E-mail tracking is an old hoax designed to poke fun at naive new e-mail users. Don't fall for it. Further, chain letters like this one put innocent folks' e-mail addresses out there for all sorts of nefarious types to hijack and use for their own purposes. Break this Chain! References: None |