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If sites are slamming the door in your face with captcha images you can't read, Solona can help you.

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Come back to earth and learn the truth about the Mars hoax from Wikipedia Snopes and Nasa's own article.

Now closing GeoCities, a relic of Web's early days Closing Down after 15 years what used to be a hoax of the past, is now the truth, the Yahoo Geocities site itself confirms this. GeoCities will close later this year. - Yahoo! GeoCities Help You are encouraged to direct anyone concerned to the Yahoo Geocities page or at least Google to find the help page that way, instead of passing on a poorly written chain letter.

By the way, gundams aren't real, neither is anime, people.

Chain letters

They don't just come in make money fast or good VS bad luck promise/threat variety. They come in every and all flavors and are not just email. From snailmail to cyber, from text to flip flop and friendship bread etc. mass-gives, if it's viral, it's a chain letter.

Viral Marketing Current Events and Chain Letters in the News

Forwards Could Hurt You Hoaxes Are Far From Harmless Fun! The Modernday Chain Letter a Subconscious Mind-Game Various Reactions to Chain Letters This eye-opening section contains sites where people express their honest feelings about receiving chain letters.

The flipside is The Hall Of Notoriety people who actually like, pass on and sometimes originate chain letters, so are the cause of the problem.

My Turn, Your Turn, Email Forwards A heart-felt, well written must-read that should help you to think twice about sending that forward.

The Three Chain Mail Profiles by Connor Andrew Clark-Lindh briefly but expertly outlines and explains the profiles of forwarders and non-forwarders.

Rumors that Just Won't Die More on various forwards Why Chain Letters Are So Bad How Chain Letters Manipulate the Masses Signs It Is A Chain Letter How to Research a Forward An Old Annoyance Evolves with Technology Chez Joel Blog Archive how to use email responsibly Don't Be Fooled by Email Hoaxes Avoiding Chain Mail Hoax Busting Sites Top Ten Sites for Debunking Urban Myths

Six Degrees of Separation! "You've been 'blessed' 'bless' your friends and pass it on and show how much you love God and how much God cares!" "Cyber snowball fight! You've been hit! Hit someone else and keep the ball going!" "Friendship circle/ball, spread the friendship, don't break the circle! Don't drop the ball! Pass it on!" "You've just received a friendship rose! Please pass this rose on and show what a good friend you are! If you get it back x times, it means you have x number of friends!" "Tag! You've been tagged! Tag your friends with this questionaire so they can play!" "You've received a word game, please read the rules, add what you can and send it on to x/all your friends! Let's see who gets stuck!" "Please please keep the prayer wheel going! Send this prayer to your friends!" "Warning! This is the worst virus ever! Don't open any messages with the subject 'Merry Christmas' 'Olympic Torch' 'Good Times' 'Join the Crew'!" "Please read! Your Msn/Yahoo/AOL/Facebook/Myspace/Bebo etc. Account is about to be deleted and you can save it by forwarding this message!" "Please don't delete this, forward it on if you have a heart, and save poor little Mariamaia who is suffering from deadly diseases!" "Birthday! Don't delete! Fill in your name and birthday and send it to all your friends and send me back a copy so we can fill in the whole calendar!" "First Name Science Project Survey!" "Share with your friends!" I Choose, the story of unbelievable, all-knowing, insufferable John who chooses to live in a constant state of euphoria!

We've all received them, and most of us have passed them on at least once in our lives. They are chain letters.

Classic Chain Letters promise love, luck, even fame or riches for forwarding, and sometimes the opposite for not passing them on. The threats can range from a period of bad luck to one's own death or the death of someone close to them.

The Chain Letter Child that Never Dies and Never Lived - inside the mind of a dying kid hoax creator

They can strike anyone anywhere, even pro-sports teams aren't off limits.

Chain letter forwards can be about anything at all, from old wives tales to politics.

Because there are so many mutations of chain letters, especially the meme and "friendship" "love" and "luck" variety, not all of them are covered on each hoax-busting site.

The reason they mutate is to stay ahead of the hoax radar. That is, someone might be more likely to believe it's true and therefore, pass it on if they can't find a write-up about it on a hoax-busting site.

Some chain letters can sneak by a lot of people's radar by not looking quite so obviously like what they actually are.

These include and are not limited to forwarded Brain Teasers, Games, Jokes, Letters, Lists, Quotes, Points, Trivia and Recipe Chain Letters

No one can deny that recipes, even coming from chain letters are great. So with that said, let's have our recipes and break the chain letters at the same time. Recipes From Chain Letters

Anti Chain Letters

There are even so-called anti-chain letters which are usually satires on chain letters. They are written in a way to show just how silly chain letters are and how anyone with a bit of sense should know better than fall for them.

The trouble with anti-chain letters is they are all too often posted, reposted, and forwarded around so they become the very thing they were meant to spoof, chain letters. Their appearance and reappearance on web sites and in email only ads to the chain letter problem, and they become as stale and unfunny as the next joke forward.

Chain letters are by no means limited to email. Web sites including those for Groups and forums on the web, the blogosphere and social networking sites such as Myspace and Facebook are also being misused as a means of passing on chain letters.

Facebook Chain Letters Myspace Chain Letters

What's more annoying, email or text message chain letters?

Yes, even if you aren't using a computer, you can still get chain letters. The snailmail variety has pretty much fizzled out, however, cell phones and other PDAs are being invaded by text message chain letters that cost money to receive.

Are there any exceptions or are all forwards simply rotten?

There are forwards that started out real and with good intentions, but they are very few compared with the vast majority, and they quickly become old-hat. Real Articles Getting Turned Into Forwards will often soon be outdated, and/or end up getting unwelcome chain letter promises and threats attached to them as they continue to be passed along. This is why it's always best to check out every and any story or sick/missing person alert on hoax-debunking sites to be sure they are in fact, for real, without having been changed in a way that takes away from what they were meant to be, and their true authors are being credited, and wanting their story forwarded on.

Pleas to send cards, Missing person alerts, prayer requests and other similar appeals to help a sick or endangered person are often bogus, and the truthful ones continue circulating years after the crisis has been resolved one way or another. This is because once a chain letter starts spreading, it just keeps going.

The exceptions to this characteristic behavior of chain letters is when there is a deadline for the furor of forwarding to stop. Elections and holidays for example. Whenever there's an upcoming US election, wild political chain letters about the candidates fly around the net. When the election is over, the chain letters concerning it also die down. Easter, the Fourth of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and even Valentine's Day chain letters come out of hibernation every year their respective holidays roll around, to deluge inboxes and web forums everywhere. Once the holiday is through, those chain letters return to hibernation, giving many people a much needed break from the unusually high amount of forwards the holiday generated.

The Gost in the Killer Email Forward Funny column that spoofs forwards If it is discovered to be a chain letter, it will be moved to a different category on this site.

How do chain letters track your email? They don't. That's one of the longest running lies/pranks chain letters play on people new to the internet. There is no such thing as an email-tracking chain letter; not from AOL or anywhere else. Charities never depend on forwarded messages and nonexistent trackers for donations, and no one will ever be in danger of dying if you refuse to forward a bogus email-tracking sick kid hoax.

Should I Really Worry About Those Stupid Email Forwards?

No, don't worry about them, discourage their spread instead.

How can I stop someone sending me chain mail?

You can block their address as described in the answers to that question on the link above. And/or, you can email them back with a link to this site or others that deal with unwanted forwards and a suggestion to them not to send any more of them.

You may also want to give them a hint how impersonal chain letters are by sending them an email that looks like an auto-response. Example text for the message body:

You are receiving this automated response because this email program has detected a chain letter forward sent by you.

To remedy this problem, please send real email instead.

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