Yeah, right, Bill Gates is gonna donate (part of) his fortune to me

Did you not know? You haven’t had any friends spread the wealth around to you? You mean, you haven’t gotten this email yet:

Dear Friends,

Please do not take this for a junk letter. Bill Gates is sharing his fortune. If you ignore this you will repent later. [You won’t just regret it; you’ll repent for your sin of not grabbing a share of that huge pie!] Microsoft and AOL are now the largest Internet companies and in an effort to make sure that Internet Explorer remains the most widely used program, Microsoft and AOL are running an e-mail beta test. [Must be that damn Firefox competition that’s gotten Microsoft so scared. Kinda odd though, since Microsoft is a software company. What the heck is an “Internet” company anyway? Oh well. Nice of AOL to extend this e-mail beta test (e-mail’s still in beta?) to those outside the US.]

When you forward this e-mail to friends, Microsoft can and will track it (if you are a Microsoft Windows user) for a two week time period. [Good thing I’m not gonna forward this email from my Mac or Linux box. Hmm… do the Gmail servers run on Linux?]

For every person that you forward this e-mail to, Microsoft will pay you $245.00, for every person that you send it to that forwards it on, Microsoft will pay you $243.00 and for every third person that receives it, you will be paid $241.00. Within 2 weeks!, Microsoft will contact you for your address and then send you a cheque.

Wow. Serious? I’m surprised Bill Gates isn’t bankrupt yet. It’s not that USD 245.00 per person you forward to, or even the USD 243.00 for each of those persons who also forwards it on. It’s the USD 241.00 that you’ll get for every third person who receives it that’s really gonna start putting a strain on his massive fortune.

Sigh.

So I got the above e-mail, and did the only responsible thing. I replied with this:

Wow. This is still going around?

<text from previous email on something similar>

Dear All,

Please don’t take this the wrong way, I’m just trying to share some knowledge.

The message that was recently forwarded to you is an email hoax (try a Google search on “email hoaxes”). To make it a little simpler for you, check out the following two links:

Snopes entry on Microsoft and AOL email hoax

Entry at Truthorfiction.com

I’ve seen a version of this hoax before (and lots of other kinds too), so I know what to look out for. Besides, I also know enough about how the Internet works. Key feature: it’s decentralized. There is no central tracking system for email, so there’s no way for a private enterprise (even Microsoft) to track who you forward email to. It’s especially difficult to try to track forwarding of one specific email.

(Nod to victims of hackers/trojans/keyloggers/etc: Ok, so yes, the above is possible, but only if your PC has already been infected.)
(Nod to conspiracy theorists: Yes, of course the NSA has their supersecret supercomputers tracking all global communications, but no, it’s not being commissioned by Bill Gates for philanthropy. ;-) )
(Nod to MS bungling: Yes, Microsoft did once issue an automated update for their XP OS that secretly contact their servers with information on your machine, specifically your OS. They were doing that to check piracy. However, this was quickly found out by the security companies (heck, anyone with a decent firewall would have noticed it), and that update was retracted. No one wants their computer to secretly contact anyone, even the supplier of their OS. But that would be one way to track your emails...)

So, sorry, but you won’t be getting any nice big cheques from Bill Gates anytime soon.

</end text>

I’ll admit, this is the first time I’ve encountered this with testimonials in BM. It’s still false. It doesn’t work. It cannot work.

Interestingly, notice how the m.o. seems to change? They’re supposed to contact you for your address and then send you a cheque. And yet, some people mysteriously receive cheques from goodness-knows-where, and some have direct deposits to their bank accounts. Strange, and somewhat alarming…

Btw, to those who think, “what’s the harm in trying?”, forwarding junk emails actually has an impact. Bandwidth still isn’t free, even if it is “unlimited”. As always, there’s a cost involved.

So why am I replying to everyone? Because I’m hoping that maybe, just maybe, people will learn to use readily available resources and educate themselves about this sort of thing. After all, a little bit of knowledge doesn’t hurt you, right?


Cheers!


Your Internet sleuth,

So there you have it. Hopes dashed. No cheque for thousands of dollars on your way. Please stop sharing Bill Gates’ wealth with me. Thank you very much.