For many years now since joining the online world, we receive e-mails, messages, inbox messages, wall posts, comments, text messages, newsletters and many more things that come to us. Now, there is something that is absolutely ridiculous that someone, some people with a whole lot of time on their hands decide to play a trick on people to create pointless and frightening chain letters. It is a hoax letter which puts us to the edge and some follow the trend.
There are several types of chain letters that say, If you do not forward this e-mail to 20 people you will have bad luck for 7 years, or if you do not send this e-mail or message to 40 people, there will be a death of a family member or friend. If you do not forward it, you will never find love, you will never have friends and all kinds of negative things that can alarm just about everyone. Of course, those who get tricked into it even more.
Sometimes we get these phony and bogus e-mails or messages to ask us to click on the link to open up the chain letter. It can contain spam, trojan viruses, malware, and spyware which compromises and puts you, and your computer at risk for online thieves which can steal personal information, files, photos, and can even look at what you are doing 24/7/365. They can also steal data, bandwidth, commit fraud and identity theft with your IP address and so much can happen.
If you have a reliable Anti-virus software which prevents you and protects you against these malicious forwards, then you are good to go, but again NEVER click on those e-mails and just delete it and empty your junk box. Also, it is a good idea to report these messages as phishing scam if you receive them. You must be so careful.
Chain letters can also be offensive and highly obscene. If your friends or family or anyone you know that sends you this stuff and gets tricked into these chain letters, simply send them a message saying that this is a fake message and ask them to delete and ignore it. That is the best thing you can do. Do not spend time on these unnecessary trends in social media and in your personal e-mail or private inbox messages. Most of the time these messages can appear in personal messages, but lately, it has been in the public eye. It makes people cringe.
So, the next time you get one, do not be creeped out by it, Just let it go. Before, when I started out on the internet back in the late 90’s, I was fooled into these chain letters toward the beginning of the millennium, and then I did extensive research on them and I have ignored and disregard those messages.
Have you been a victim of chain letters? These chain letter trends must stop.
Talin Orfali Ghazarian 