Please Dont Forward This To All Your Friends
by Doug Anger, Technology Columnist

The first recorded instance of unsolicited email spam occurred on May 4, 1978 and was sent to 600 addresses. On April 12, 1994, two immigration lawyers sent messages to 6000 Internet newsgroups (i.e. bulletin boards) which reached millions of email addresses. As of June 2006 55 billion spam email messages are sent every day. According to the Washington Post, spam will cost businesses and organizations a total of $10 billion by the end of this year.
While most people think of spam only as the email advertisements that make up the majority of the junk email, there is another kind of spam that can be far more dangerous: email hoaxes and chain letters that victims believe and forward voluntarily to everyone in their address books. If you have an email account, you have most likely received such a message.
At least two hoaxes in circulation try to convince the user that a legitimate Windows file is a virus and instruct them how to delete it. Many email hoaxes ask the user to donate money to so-called charities that are in fact not charities at all. Many warn about dangerous products or ridiculous new laws that in fact do not exist. In every case, the message asks you to forward it to all your friends. One such hoax even claims that Microsoft will pay you to forward it. Dont believe it.
Apart from hoaxes, email chain letters also try to convince the user to forward them. These often include some inspirational story or poem and ask the user to forward it to everyone in his or her address book. There is also the ever-popular email petition, which the sender claims will be destroyed if you dont add your name to the list and forward it.
These hoaxes and chain letters can be dangerous for a variety of reasons. First, the amount of Internet traffic generated by these kinds of messages is expensive to ISPs and email providers. For this reason, most of these companies prohibit them in their terms of service. While these policies are often not enforced, you could lose your email or Internet access for forwarding chain letters. (Check your own email providers terms of service to see if this applies to you.) 
Second, if you believe hoax messages about viruses and start deleting or modifying system files on your computer, you could do serious damage to your system.
Third, email-tracking services like ReadNotify.com allow the sender of an email to track it. This can include the IP address, geographic location, and other information about everyone who opens the message. Even if no tracking system is used, your email address will most likely be forwarded along with the rest of the message to everyone who gets it from the people you send it to. Simply by scrolling through a few such emails that I received, I was able to get over 300 email addresses (not counting repeats) including one of a relatively prominent Washington politician of a few years ago. The moral of the story: unless you want thousands of random people to know your email address and the identities of everyone in your address book, dont forward that message.

You can learn more about current email hoaxes by visiting http://www.hoax-slayer.com/  and http://antivirus.about.com/od/emailhoaxes/Email_Hoaxes.htm.
