Signs of a chain letter:

1. Anything from an unknown source that somehow plays on your emotions and urges you to pass it on. If your friend only passed it on to you and didn't actually write it themselves, then it's from an unknown source since they got it from a friend of a friend and so on.

2. Anything that makes absurd claims of good fortune for passing it on and bad fortune if you do not.

3. Anything that tells you to send a copy back to the person who sent it to you.

4. Anything that circulates all over the internet in the form of blog memes, email forwards, myspace bulletins, Facebook fun space, super/advanced wall, applications of a viral nature, especially the so-called "gift applications" that require you to "unlock" more choices of virtual gifts to send, by sending the first few choices to friends, anything that promises good luck/friendship/whatever.

5. Anything that grabs you by the heart or by fear of not passing it along. This can range from "Forward this and pass on the friendship!" to "Delete this if we're not friends!" to "If you are too lazy or busy to take 5 seconds and forward this, a child will die and it will be your fault!" to "If you don't act now and forward this, you'll miss a chance to save a friend's life!" Bogus warning chains are especially bad for this. "Spread some laughs and brighten up somebody's day!" usually attached to joke or cutesy chain letters. "Post this to x number of people, hit alt-4 and something wonderful like your true love's name will pop up on the screen! It's true, it's really really really true!" This angle shows up in love, luck, and friendship chain letters, and of course, it's completely bogus as is the "friendship" "love" or "luck" or lack thereof that any chain letter can really offer. "If you love Jesus, you won't be ashamed to pass it on, but Jesus will be ashamed of you if you don't!" "A man received an email and deleted it, and he didn't see God. A man received this post and read it and was blessed, and he passed it on and God's light shone on him and through him, all around on everybody he passed this message to! This message comes from God!"

No, it does not. None of them do. This type of chain letter is particularly malicious and exploitive, preying on the emotions, fears, and vulnerabilities of religious people. It often causes them to forward out of guilt, fear, and a false sense of blessing others with the forward, when the opposite has been done.

annoying the recipients, most of whom don't reply, except for the few that, like the forwarder, were also taken in, and stroke the forwarder's ego, encouraging them to pass on more chain letters.

6. The chain letter tells you to send a copy including all headers and with your info to a certain email address - and sometimes in addition you are instructed to send a copy back to the person who sent it to you as well as passing it on to others.

7. The use of reverse psychology as an attempt to manipulate the reader into thinking it's their own idea and the better choice to forward/repost the chain letter. "You don't have to forward this, nothing will happen if you don't." "Unlike other forwards, you're not obligated to pass this on." BUT...What's really being said here is "I was so nice not to insult or threaten you, so please pass it on and do this chain letter a good turn and feel good that you did!"

8. Widely circulated anti-chain letters. An anti-chain letter is a parody of a chain letter but it has become an actual chain letter because it's forwarded and posted widely around the internet. The Billy Evans parody about a child with no body is one example. The "I No Longer" giving a list of things no longer done thanks to friends sending so many warning chain letters is another. A few more parodies list several types of chain letters, then give examples. The parodies on virus warning chains, the "Bad Times" parody is a joke chain letter. There is another parody that is a varient of the sick/dying child, and usually starts off with "My name is (some really odd made-up name from some odd made-up place) And I'm suffering from rare and deadly diseases." Or "There is a starving child in (made-up location) suffering from many rare and deadly diseases." These anti-chain letters can be found on many web sites, with some of the wording differing from site to site, but with the content mostly the same.

9. Anything that does one or more, or all of the above.

10. Anything that does one or more, or all of the above, and claims it's not a chain letter.

Additional signs which may or may not be present:

11. Claims of originating from some famous person or from a person held in high esteem by society, a doctor, lawyer, professor etc. Most often, these claims are completely bogus or at the very least, taken out of context and falsely attributed to a named person or establishment.

12. "FW" "FWD" in the subject line on the main header or in subject lines included in the headers that weren't trimmed inside the body of the email.

13. The subject line shouts for your attention. "Please read!" "Urgent!" "Please don't delete, this is important!" "You Need to Read This!" "To All Who Have a Heart!" "To All (Insert group of humanity whether it be women, men, Christians, Jews, etc.) "Heart Attack" "Cancer" "Danger!"

14. An innocent looking subject line that doesn't shout at you to read. "Thinking about you." "Hello!" "A simple hello" "I Thought You Could Use This" These are particularly annoying because the subject appears to be from a friend sending a personal note, but opening the email or reading the web post reveals that it's just another chain letter. Sometimes the subject line is just blank. So it isn't always easy to spot a chain letter just by looking at the subject line. There are times when an urgent subject line is not an indicator of a chain letter and the email is for real and worth taking the time to read and reply to if necessary. But this is considerably rare, and usually directly involve someone close to you or on a specific internet forum you on which you and they or their friends are members.

15. The presence of header info in the message body, showing the message has been forwarded to many people before it was passed on to your friend and then to you.

16. A long list of people besides you in the To: or Cc: field of the main headers - or the words "Recipient list suppressed" "Undisclosed recipient list" or some such phrase in the Cc: field. This indicates an attempt to hide the fact that the chain letter was sent to many people, or simply to keep all the email addresses from being displayed.

17. The To: field doesn't contain your email address, but that of the sender or someone else instead.

18. Instructions in the email or blog post on how to pass it on. I.E. The chain letter tells you to trim all headers and cut and paste the remaining material into a new message to pass on to your friends. Other chain letters actually tell you to leave in all of the header info for "tracking" so that the bogus petition or hoax can reach a certain number of emails and be tallied so that the supposed goal of the petition or hoax can be attained. Of course, that is a load, there is no such email tracking technology, and the real goal of chain letters is to mass-produce and keep circulating so that spammers can collect your email address and what other info they can.

19. The absence of text urging you in any way to pass it on, or of extra "fwd" in the subject and/or header info, with only the sappy story or poem, joke, warning, brain-teaser, list of quotes, trivia, survey etc remaining. This does not make it any less of a chain letter. Some forwarders just trim out the forwarding demands and the extra header info to make it look less like a chain letter so that you will pass it on, and maybe even write them back with a kudo for sending you some crap they didn't even write. Forwards sometimes write a little personal note praising the forward they are sending, or even a "Hi, I thought of you when I read this." or the most common excuse "I don't usually send these things." or even "I hate chain mail, but..." These excuses are very common on blog meme posts, but no excuse makes them any less a chain letter or any more acceptable.