[14962] in APO-L
Just Say No to Chain mail
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Deborah Cherry)
Tue Sep 17 14:15:49 1996
Date: Tue, 17 Sep 1996 14:12:55 -0400
Reply-To: Deborah Cherry <dc30+@ANDREW.CMU.EDU>
From: Deborah Cherry <dc30+@ANDREW.CMU.EDU>
To: Multiple recipients of list APO-L <APO-L@VM.CC.PURDUE.EDU>
(BTW- if you take a look at
http://www.lexis-nexis.com/lncc/about/ptrak.html you'll see exactly what
info is kept, and it's not as alarming or as unusual as you think. Part
of it sez:
>While business competitors of LEXIS-NEXIS have
>for some time made Social Security numbers available to users of their
>services, and continue to do so, LEXIS-NEXIS discontinued the display
>of Social Security numbers in the P-TRAK file as of June 11, 1996,
>eleven days after the product was introduced.
>
>There has been much erroneous information distributed on the Internet
>regarding the data displayed in the P-TRAK file. The displayed record
>may, but not always, include the name of the individual, the
>individual's maiden and assumed names, current as well as up to two
>previous addresses, month and year of birth and telephone number. That
>is the only information displayed in the P-TRAK file.
So make sure to use the steps listed in the article below before you hit
the F button next time something looks like you should pass it on to
your address book....
Here's a section of an article entitled "Breaking the Chain" by Adam
Engst, published in the electronic newsletter TidBITS . For the full
article, lok at
<http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/TidBITS-325.html#lnk5>. While the
opinions expressed are his, I feel that it's some very useful general
advice:
What about worthy causes? Several readers wrote in to say they felt
chain mail about worthy causes was justified in some instances. I feel
there is no cause worthy enough to justify abusing the Internet via
chain mail. Those that use chain mail to promote a cause risk far
greater damage to their reputations. Using chain mail for worthy causes
suffers from two basic problems.
First, even if the information in a piece of chain mail was accurate at
one time, situations change. The classic piece of chain mail is the one
that requests that postcards be sent to Craig Shergold, a dying boy in
England. Guess what? Craig was cured, he's quite a bit older now, and
the postcards keep coming, overwhelming the local post office. Craig was
a classic good cause, but chain mail turned his wish for postcards into
a nightmare.
<http://www.eff.org/papers/eegtti/eeg_81.html#SEC82>
Second, there are without a doubt a ton of good causes. If they all
decided to use chain mail in order to raise money or gain support, the
Internet would be swamped. Then there's the issue of differences in
opinion - your good cause may be my anathema, and vice versa. Of course,
once a good cause proved successful, how far behind would the con
artists and scam mongers be? The only way to deal with chain mail is to
stop it whenever it rears its head.
Worthy causes can use other tools available on the Internet to garner
support. For instance, the Web is ideal for disseminating information.
You can update a Web page with the latest information so what's
disseminated is never inaccurate. A Web page can also provide source
information so people can check for themselves and decide if they agree
with you. You can even collect names for an online petition on a Web
form.
Identifying and Analyzing Chain Mail -- I'd like to leave you with a few
bits of advice on how to identify and analyze chain mail.
Look for specifics, especially a cut-off date, a court case
number, or an FCC docket number. Most chain mail doesn't contain much
specific information, because otherwise people would see that it was a
hoax.
Look for an authoritative source. Who is the message from
originally? Who forwarded it to you? (Be wary if you don't know the
person who forwarded it.) Remember, it's easy to forge email. Also, if
the message doesn't come with an email address or Web page from which
you can get more information, it's likely to be chain mail.
<http://www.crew.umich.edu/~chymes/newusers/Think.html>
<http://www.utopia.com/mailings/rre/chain.letter.petitions.html>
Verify the situation. Recently there was a furor over a proposed
newsgroup called
rec.music.white-power. The first chain mail message I saw
exhorting people to vote against the group didn't contain the call for
votes (CFV) and without the CFV, there was no way to tell when the
voting would end. Research in DejaNews revealed the voting had been over
for almost a month, but the results hadn't been released. You must take
everything with a grain of salt, but the more information you have, the
better.
<http://www.dejanews.com/>
Finally, don't be gullible. Just because something appears in an
email message doesn't
mean it's true or has any bearing on reality. Think before you act
and encourage others to do the same.
Yours in LFS,
Debbie Cherry
Alumni, Kappa Chapter, Carnegie Mellon University
Section 62 Staff
dc30@andrew.cmu.edu
