Today's topic is Chains - chain messages, chain emails, and chain social media status.
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| If I was good at photoshopping, I would make this sign say that ONLY YOU CAN PREVENT FORWARDING CHAIN LETTERS |
Smokey The Bear's sign told the public "Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires." In essence, it was saying that it is your responsibility to protect our forests which, in turn, will prevent forest fires.
The same idea is true for the Internet and your friends.
"Only You Can Stop Forwarding Spam Letters To Your Friends."
It is your responsibility to read messages and posts before you forward or copy/paste. And that means you should read them all the way through to the end! Then delete it.
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| Yeah, right! |
It is your responsibility to not spam your friends with forwarding every single chain letter that comes to you. Just because the letter is giving you some directions to follow, it doesn't mean you have to do it.
If you have to think about who among your friends that you will send it to, then you are thinking too much!
If there is a bad threat or a good promise attached, use your head. Don't believe that every bleeding heart message is telling the truth. They lie. You are never going to find love, money or good health in a chain letter.
Common sense is not granted to every user on Facebook. Unfortunately, that's a fact.
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| Message was first seen in 2012. It hasn't happened yet. |
Eventually you are going to friend someone who is common sense challenged, who sends you chain letters, one after the other. They may be great in every other respect - a good game friend, a wonderful personality, a kind heart, etc. - but when it comes to being gullible, this person is the poster child.
If you allow them to continue to send chain messages to you without writing back to set them straight, you are contributing to their gullibility.
You are giving them permission to keep your name on their chain list and you will continue to get first crack at every new message they get until you put a stop to it.
Stop letting their behavior slide.
Inform and educate them that they fell for a scam.
Be the pin that bursts their bubble by giving them links to prove to them that the content of the chain message is not true.
Tell them to stop sending you these messages.
Give them fair warning that you will unfriend and block if they continue to send the messages to you.
When you do get another one, follow through - unfriend and block.
LET IT STOP WITH YOU
If you are the recipient of chain messages who routinely forwards them to friends, stop now. Exercise restraint. No matter how urgent they seem, let the chain message stop with you.
TIPS:
When you get a chain message from a "friend":
1) do a Google search to see if the information is true
2) give the sender a few of the links from your Google search, prove to them it is a scam or hoax.
3) if you are considering whether to follow the directions, STOP. Count to ten - but do it while deleting the chain message!
4) inform the friend who sent it to you to skip over your name the next time they are picking out names to send to
5) make a decision to keep or delete repeat senders.
WHAT IS A CHAIN?
You will know a chain when you see it because will it will show evidence that it was copy pasted numerous times, it will always direct you to forward or copy paste the pre-written text to a specific number of your friends.
The actual number of people you are instructed to send to will change on each letter, most likely edited by the previous sender.
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| From 2014 |
Usually the letter will also tell you the expected outcome after you post it - what's in it for you. If you do send it, the letter might say that you will get money or that you will be granted a wish. If you don't send it, they might say that you will have bad luck. About two years ago, I received a letter that said if I didn't forward it, that I would die in 30 days. I didn't forward it and I'm still here.
In the above picture dated 2014, there are two outcomes. One says the app will turn blue if you are an avid user, then it will be free of charge. The other outcome says to send message to 10 people and if you don't, then the whatsapp activates billing and users will be charged per message.
You can be sure we admins will be the first know if there is some newly created mechanism that automatically starts charging you for not sending a message to 10 of your friends. It's ludicrous and it's just not going to happen.
THE VOICE
When you read the wording that was used in the message that was sent to you, after overlooking the typos, the poorly worded text, or broken English because of using a translator, you might think that the words were the actual words of the person who sent it to you.
On the other hand, if you sent this one to all your friends because you felt so sorry for this little boy's fantastic unbelievable story, you might be embarrassed when someone wrote back to you with the following Snopes result. Just think ... all those people you sent this little boy's story to and it isn't even true...
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https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/sad-sack/ |
In the photo below, some users seriously believed Microsoft was going to pay them $245. A quick Google would have pegged it for a scam.
INSTRUCTIONS? WHAT INSTRUCTIONS?
There are some Facebook users who read these chain messages as if it's an instruction - something they are supposed to do - or something bad will happen to them. They make it their mission inform their Facebook friends - in this case, 50 Friends!
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| Send to 50 friends or you get Bad Luck starting now! It's amazing but some people do believe that any Bad Luck that happens to them will be because they didn't send this to 50 of the BEST Friends. |
One lady told me her hand was about to fall off from copy pasting a chain message to all of her 3000 friends. Considering my name begins with M, it is pretty sad that she got as far as me in her copy pasting before anyone clued her in.
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| Fabrizio Brambilla message has been circulating for years |
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| From SNOPES |
My reply to her included this link for Snopes and the above picture to show her she was indeed wasting her time doing it because it was a hoax. She replied: oh good, can I stop now?
I usually unfriend and block someone who sends me repeat chains. I let the first one slide, after that, they're gone. You should make it your practice too.
Once in awhile, you'll get one saying that any donation you make will be matched by some high profile person who pledged to price match for each donation. Your reply: Show me the proof.
Bill Gates may be a billionaire, but he’s got better things to do with his cash than give it to people who simply share a photo of him on Facebook.
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| https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2013/04/08/bill-gates-5000-dollars-facebook-sharing/ |
When you send chains with fantastic claims of good fortune, you have to consider that 1) you will get you unfriended by 50 friends, 2) you'll get a bad case of carpal tunnel and 3) it's a good bet you will end up in Facebook jail.
MULTIPLE LETTERS
You have to remember that you aren't the only one who got the letter and unfortunately for lack of good judgment, you aren't the only one who is sending or forwarding it.
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| Religious shares get a lot of attention. It isn't unusual for one person to get 10 or more of these per week from mutual friends. |
Most people get chain letters and chuck them, especially if they get multiples from several friends. All it proves is that the senders can follow directions - albeit blindly.
WHY?
There is always a reason for sending these copy pastes and most of the time it is prank-oriented.
In the mind of the spam creator, the longer the message or status is in characters, the better, because it is meant to use up data for those users who receive a limited number of GB of data per month from their cell provider. Because of the prank, they will have to purchase more data to be able to get through the month until their next month's allowance kicks in.
Sending chains are a mean spirited and lousy thing to do to data users.
Chain statuses - where you copy paste someone's status to put on your own timeline - these clog up newsfeeds. There is one that says they can't see all of their friends posts and the only way they will see them is if each one comments on the status which is supposed to tell Facebook that you want to see posts from the people who commented. The remedy doesn't work, but clogging up the newsfeed did work.
FACEBOOK JAIL Chain messages can get you jailed when the recipients mark them as spam. If you send out 100 forwards or copy pastes, that is potentially 100 people who can mark your message as spam. Jail can be anywhere from 24 hours up to 30 days where you will be disabled from using Messenger, if you used it for the message, or from posting on your timeline and in your groups if it was a status you posted.
Stop and think before you copy paste or forward a chain. If it is too fantastic, or way out there being too good to be true, it probably is.
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| Facebook is FREE. Google it, get the truth, message it to the sender, then unfriend and block them for sending you spammy messages |
If you cannot verify the message contents as truth, don't send it.
If you choose not to research the message contents before you send it, shame on you.
When Smokey the Bear says "Only you can prevent forest fires" the same goes for chain status posts and chain messages.
Only you can prevent spamming people with chain messages.
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