From: David D. Levine [davidl@ssd.intel.com] Sent: Thursday, December 28, 1995 8:46 AM To: O0oOo0O@aol.com Subject: Re: >> R e s p o n s e << (Re: Need Cash Quick?) In message <951228003845_25395667@emout05.mail.aol.com>, O0oOo0O@aol.com writes: > Forgive me. > > Do you really think that I'm a malicious scheming weasel out to do harm? > I'm not, I'm just a guy with his wife, and we're going through some very > very hard times. > > I did not invent this letter, I found it somewhere and it gave me > hope. Sorry. > > My worst offense here is being naive when it comes to Newsgroup posting > protocol. Excuse me. > > >> This is illegal. Never do it again. << > > Your tone makes it sound as if you'd smack me, given the chance, before > even knowing the particulars, or the what the bigger picture is. Geez... > > If you want to be kind enough to inform offenders of the truth, why > assume that they are the evil ones? > > Why use words that speak to them as if they were "trying to get away with > something"? It only alienates people. > > "FYI and so you know, posting this type of letter is illegal, and I would > advise you to never do it again." > > > You also didn't have to report me to AOL "authorities". > > > Sorry for all this bother. OK, you didn't know what you were doing. But look at it from my perspective. I've been on the Internet since 1983. I have seen this EXACT SAME SCHEME literally HUNDREDS of times before. Maybe even THOUSANDS of times, if you count the fact that it is usually cross-posted to multiple newsgroups and has to be skipped over in each one. Since the Internet exploded into public consciousness in 1995, I have seen this scheme every couple of weeks at least, sometimes more than once a week. It appears in every newsgroup I read; it comes to me via mailing lists; it is sent to me directly by people who got my e-mail address off a web page I maintain. I hope you realize how annoying this can be. It's like being spare-changed by some guy on the street. If it happens once, you might give him some money. If it happens more often, you will probably ignore him, but if it keeps happening with increasing frequency despite your ignoring him you might get a little testy. This is the position I'm in. I am so tired of being spare-changed on the Internet -- again and again and again -- that I no longer take the time to write a polite letter; I just dash off a quick note to the poster and his/her system administrator. Sometimes that note might come off as a little uncaring. But I feel that this is the best way to help prevent this problem. (Telling the poster alone will not prevent the problem, because nobody would ever do this more than once anyway; the system administrator must be notified, to remind them to tell their users not to do this.) But that's not the worst of it. Not only won't this scheme work (do the math and figure out how many people will have to join the chain after you in order for you to get the money it promises). Not only is it off-topic for the newsgroup to which you posted it. Not only is it a violation of your agreement with America On-Line. IT IS AGAINST THE LAW! By posting this chain letter to pnw.general, you have attempted to initiate a "pyramid scheme." Pyramid schemes are illegal because they benefit the person who starts it at the expense of those who come later (who are given false hope of riches, which cannot be fulfulled because the "base" of the pyramid must be impossibly broad). You've probably heard the expression "ignorance of the law is no excuse" -- that expression applies in this case. The letter's assurances that it is perfectly legal, and that it works, are LIES -- they were put there by the originator of the letter in order to help convince poor saps like you to send money and perpetuate the scam. You will probably lose your AOL account because of this. You have probably already lost $5 by sending it to the originator of this scam (and if you didn't send the money, why did you think anybody else would send money to you?). You have probably lost your faith in human nature. Don't lose all this and gain nothing from the experience. You should take two lessons away from this experience: 1. don't do anything without understanding the consequences, and 2. there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. - David D. Levine, Intel Scalable Systems Division == davidl@ssd.intel.com "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."