BreakTheChain.org
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Do You Believe In God?Date Added: May 28, 2002
BreakTheChain.org recommends strongly against participating in any type of online petition. Though this one appears to be in fun, there is no reason you should sign it and every reason you shouldn't. Add your name to the bottom. I told this guy that I could find 300 people who believe in God before he could find 300 people who do not believe in God. If you believe in God please copy & paste this onto a blank email form (leaving off the headers), add your name, and send it to your friends and family. If you happen to be the 300th person signing this, please send it back to kountrygirl11@hotmail.com This isn't a hoax or a chain letter, just wanted to prove a point. Thank you and God bless! (206 names deleted) BreakTheChain.org's cardinal rule: Even if a message claims that it's not a chain letter, it is a chain letter if it asks you to send it to other people, and, thus, should be broken. The most compelling reason not to sign this so-called petition is that signatures are not being collected - at least not by the owner of the e-mail address given in it (or any of the other addresses given in various versions of it). Mail to Kountrygirl11@hotmail.com is undeliverable. Though the author may have thought there was no harm in her little contest, e-petitions and other chain letters have been known to severely tax - even completely disable - e-mail servers with the sheer volume of traffic they generate. Of course it's just as likely that the owner of the e-mail address given above did not originate this chain letter at all. She could be the victim of a juvenile prank to attach her e-mail address to a popular chain letter, which will ultimately lead to her account being overloaded with unwanted junk e-mail. Since Hotmail specifically prohibits the use of their accounts to create or collect chain letters, this prank may have gotten her account closed. Whoever wrote the above, at least he or she had the presence of mind to ask you to delete headers. The motivation seems to be to keep the copy clean and readable, but the advice is good for another reason. Copying and pasting into a new message stifles the creation of a long list of e-mail addresses (of those who received it before you) that spammers love to collect. Unfortunately, many people ignore this advice (either because they don't want to or don't know how) and leave the headers intact. Some versions of this chain had hundreds of addresses in their headers when I got a hold of them. For guidelines on deciding if an e-petition is worth signing, read my Primer on Armchair Activism in the Chain-Breaker's Library. Break this Chain! References: None |