Chain e-mails result in cyber-boycotts

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.