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Let's expand on those points:
- Sending a mail to everyone in your address book is
basically spamming - sending unsolicited email to
multiple recipients. That is not (yet) illegal but it is annoying. However, let's assume that you and your friends
only have 20 email addresses each. If you forward the
email to all of them and they each forward similarly, 400
copies now exist. Once more and that number becomes 8000!
In reality, there are very few people with only 20 email
addresses and these emails are forwarded for much more
than three times.
- How can it pre-empt the breaking news? Remember the virus
Melissa?
It was in the media long before you ever received an
email about it and the truth is that you probably never
did. The same was true of Nimda
and Love
Letter. If you look at the original date of the email
that you've received, for which you may have to scroll
down a long way or look in the headers, it's probably a
week old. When was the last time it took any real news
that long to become public knowledge?
- If any information of this nature is released by or
leaked from any huge corporation, the chances are that
it'll be mentioned on their website and prominently. If
you can't find anything about it within one click of
their home page, it probably didn't come from there at
all. If you do find anything, it'll almost certainly be a
confirmation that it's a hoax and didn't come from them!
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