Chainletter Hoaxes

Charity Hoaxes

These hoax messages ask you to forward them to all your friends for a good cause. Sounds harmless but it often isn't. If you received one of these messages, please send it to hoaxkill@hoaxkill.com to warn all the people who have received the message before you.

Timothy Flyte: Timothy Flyte (who doesn't exist) has ostriopliosis of the liver (the disease doesn't exist) and asks you to forward this message to all your friends. The National Diesese Society (which doesn't exist) will receive 7 cents for every person the message is forwarded to.
Jessica Mydek: Forward this message to save another fictitious person's life. This time the donations are supposed to come from the American Cancer Society. The ACS released a statement about this chain letter.
David Lawitts / Tamara Martin / Rick Connor: Ditto. This time the money will come from the National Lung Cancer Association.

Useless Petitions

These hoaxes take the form of petitions which try to get something done by collecting a lot of "signatures". If you received one of these messages, please send it to hoaxkill@hoaxkill.com to warn all the people who have received the message before you.

PBS Funding Petition: It sounded like a good idea but turned into a bad nightmare for two students.
Closure of South African Child Protection Unit: Sound like a worthy cuase... if it were true.

Prayer Requests

These messages ask you to forward them to all your friends to get as many people as possible to pray for someone. Although these messages can't be called hoaxes, they do have the same flaws: They take up a lot of bandwidth and there's no way to stop them.

What do you think of these chain letters? Should we send hoax warnings to people who have received them or should we leave it up to the recipients to decide whether or not they think it's worth forwarding? Discuss it here.