Questionable Email - Chain Letters and Scams

In addition to reading the following, also check out our help file on phishing.

Just about everyone using email knows what spam is and what to do with it (filter and/or delete it). There are certain other types of email that come close to being spam, but for various reasons some people are tricked into believing it and following through with whatever the email asks of them. These questionable emails can be grouped into two main areas -- chain letters and scams.

Chain Letters

A chain letter email is a message that either tells you to pass it on to others for whatever reason, or it makes you feel as if you should forward it even if it doesn't directly say to do so.

Regular chain letters -- the ones promising luck, friendship, love, etc if you forward them -- have been around for a while now. Most know not to forward these.

However, with more people using email, new chain letters have emerged. It can be difficult to tell if the claims in these messages are true or not. They get mistaken as a real news item, or (if based on a real news story) they get distorted or out-of-date as people pass them along, thinking the message is still current.

Some good examples of chain letter emails (these link to an anti-chain letter and spam site called breakthechain.org):

Sometimes these messages are based on truth, but usually the claims are exaggerated. It's best to check with websites such as snopes.com or the aforementioned breakthchain.org site to see if the message you received is real and worth sending along to others. In almost all cases, you will find out that you should just delete the message instead of forwarding it on to others.

Scams

Some email messages are outright fraud. One of the best examples of an email scam is known as the Nigerian Scam (mainly because the scam in question usually mentions this country). It's also known as the Advance Fee Fraud or the 419 Fraud (named after a section of law in the Criminal Code of Nigeria). The typical Nigerian scam message will ask about a "request for urgent business relationship" and mention how if you help transfer a large sum of money from one bank account to another, you will be rewarded with a percentage of that money. This is real fraud that is costing innocent victims anywhere from hundreds to thousands of dollars.

There are similar scams that mention lotteries, contests, etc. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

As with chain letter emails, you can check out the claims made in these messages by going to sites such as snopes.com or or breakthchain.org.