Chain e-mails result in cyber-boycotts

By Amir Sidharta

JAKARTA (JP): In the past few days, I have received numerous e-mail messages under "guardian angel". I have to agree with my friends that these particular e-mail were more fun than others I received in recent times.

Most had been about the financial crisis, phone calls from and visits by heads of states and government that President Soeharto met with this week, arrival of the IMF and U.S. government officials in the country, or rumors about the political situation.

But "guardian angel" featured a visual trick that took advantage of the scroll bar of the windows utilized in computer interfaces, whether they be Macs or Microsoft Windows.

By manipulating the spaces between letters of word phrases -- "hi people" and "ain't this cool?" repeated numerous times in a very long array in this extra-long e-mail -- readers will see a dynamic linear animation of changing forms, akin to flip books.

Come to think of it, I have to agree with my friend in Bali, who received it from her old high school friends in the U.S., that it is actually rather silly. Nonetheless, it is still cool and different. At any rate, it provides something simple and refreshing for a change.

Initially, I received "angels" from friends in Jakarta and Bandung. It was actually a kind of chain letter. There was a note from someone, apparently the original sender of the message, asking that any readers of the message who found it to be cool should send it to at least 10 of their friends.

This original sender also asked that they be included because he or she wanted to keep track of where the message went. I immediately sent it to everyone on my mailing list, and took special care to make sure the original sender's address was also included.

The next day, when I checked my e-mail, I received the "angel" from some of the friends to whom I had previously sent the message the previous day. They had received the mail from various parts of the globe, and had not even received the message I had sent.

"I wonder how it got to your computer -- I guess it's spreading quickly through the wires," one asked. Yes, it certainly was spreading like an epidemic. I myself received around a dozen "angels". You can only imagine how many the original sender received.

Today, I received yet another chain e-mail. This time the subject read, "if you delete this, you have no heart". The original sender claimed to be suffering from severe lung and throat cancer due to secondhand smoke, and said the chain e-mail was "a final attempt" to help solve her problem.

She added: "For every one person that this letter is sent to, the national lung and cancer association will donate 6 cents to help me and other people like me become healthy again."

The sender also asked that sympathetic readers pass on the message to at least 10 friends, and to an e-mail address of someone whom she said "keeps track of the names that have passed this along".

I then remembered there was a chain e-mail about a year ago that also asked for sympathy, this time for a sick child. That one said a publishing company would donate a few cents for every chain e-mail that was sent. In order for the company to keep track of the number of senders, the publishing house's e-mail address should be included as a recipient, the message said.

Believing that forwarding the chain e-mail would be for a good cause and knowing the publisher produced very good books, I sent the e-mail to friends and family. The next day, a friend said the e-mail to the publishing company bounced.

A few days later, my sister sent me a note that she had heard from her friend, who was acquainted with someone who worked for the publishing company, that it was all due to the mischief of someone who wanted to boycott the company. Apparently, the e-mail address given to all of the recipients was actually one for e- mail orders.

This is commonly called spamming, which means flooding an e- mail address with a myriad of junk messages to make it hard for the address owner to retrieve "real" e-mail. The publishing house received so many messages due to this spam that it had to use a new address for e-mail orders. Those who took part in forwarding the e-mail, including myself, participated in the boycott without even realizing it.

The Internet is a wonderful source for alternative information about facts the press does not dare publish in this sensitive time. However, we also know not to believe much of the information broadcast through its channels. Last week, rumors about a coup and members of the first family were already abroad, sent through the Internet. We know for certain now that none of those messages was true.

The Internet is also an efficient, effective and convenient means of broadcasting information about almost anything. Using e- mail interfaces, we can easily send information to all of our contacts at once. No need to write each of their addresses on envelopes, and no need for stamps.

It also reaches the addressees within minutes or hours. Well, sometimes it takes a few days, but on average it is still quicker than regular mail, otherwise known today as "snail mail". The convenient interface of e-mail makes it easy for recipients to forward messages they get to their contacts.

Inevitably, many people have used the convenience of the Internet for their own malicious purposes, and many other users of the new tool have unwittingly participated in their evil mischief in spamming an address.

For now, tackling the problem is simple.

Next time you get a cool chain e-mail, go ahead and enjoy it, and then forward it to your friends. If the message asks you to send it to a particular e-mail address for tracking reasons, it would be wise to send a separate note to the address to ask for confirmation about their knowledge of the project.

Otherwise, just exclude the e-mail address altogether. Or else you might become an unknowing and unwilling participant in boycotts against your favorite, environmentally conscious companies.