Chain Mail Forwarding Scams

Chain mail has begun as early as the use of email has existed. They begun with scams threatening you that if you do not forward to a number of friends, something bad will happen to you. Then, some very nasty people invented scams like the following:

Dear : All,

Hello, My name is Krista Marie and I have a new born baby named Natalie.

She means the world to me, and just recently, the doctors have discovered that my little Natalie has "Brain Cancer."

Unfortunatly my husband and I don't have the money to pay for the bill.

But my husband and I have worked out a deal with AOL and they have agreed to give us 5 cents to each person that received this e-mail.

So please, forward this to everyone you know, and help out my little Natalie and I.

Thank you.

Your Sincere :
Krista Marie

* This is NOT a joke e-mail, this is regarding to save a new Life. Please dtake this message seriously. Thank you!

We do not know if Krista Marie and Natalie are real people. However, the whatever "deal" with AOL is definitely a scam because there is no way AOL can know if anyone has received the forwarded email, at least not by sending the image as an attachment. The number of viewers may be tracked if the image is being hosted by AOL and is embedded as HTML inside the email.

We strongly despise scammers who create such prank since it will greatly kill the morale of kind souls in the world.