Messages sometimes include phony promises from companies or wealthy individuals (such as Bill Gates) promising a monetary reward to everyone who receives the message. Infamously, the salacious Claire Swire email spread in a chain-like fashion when its recipient sought to learn Swire's identity. Some email messages sent as chain letters may seem fairly harmless for example, a grammar school student wishing to see how many people can receive his/her email for a science project, but they can grow exponentially and be hard to stop. These types of letters will flourish for some days and will die out naturally, partly based on the economic realities of recipients, and possibly because they may also reason that if that was truly the original letter, then it cannot contain cases of people who had broken or continued the chain. The content usually gives one or two examples of people, sometimes public figures, who obeyed and were rewarded and of others who disobeyed and suffered heavily, which may even include cases of deaths and of someone becoming a millionaire overnight. Often these letters originate from photocopy centers, claiming to have originated from the Pope, with the intent of persuading people to make copies of such letters. Ĭhain letters take religious perspectives to the extremes, especially when relating to Christianity. It soon swamped the Denver post office with hundreds of thousands of letters before spilling into St. This letter started in Denver, Colorado in 1935, based on an earlier luck letter. One notorious early example was the 'Prosperity Club' or 'Send-a-Dime' letter. These might be exchanged hand-to-hand or distributed through the mail. The oldest known channel for chain letters is written, or printed, on letters on paper.

Printed Australian chain letter from 2006, with a five-cent coin taped to it as what it calls a 'financial eye-catcher' However, it is often difficult to distinguish chain letters from genuine correspondence. Some colleges and military bases have passed regulations stating that in the private mail of college students and military personnel, respectively, chain letters are not authorized and will be thrown out. In the United States, chain letters that request money or other items of value and promise a substantial return to the participants (such as the infamous Make Money Fast scheme) are illegal. Urban legends usually have no negative effect aside from wasted time. Another common form are the emails that promise users monetary rewards for forwarding the message or suggest that they are signing something that will be submitted to a particular group. Urban legends: Urban legends are designed to be redistributed and usually warn users of a threat or claim to be notifying them of important or urgent information.It could also be a scam that convinces users to spread the letter to other people for a specific reason, or send money or personal information. A hoax could be malicious, instructing users to delete a file necessary to the operating system by claiming it is a virus.

Hoaxes: Hoaxes attempt to trick or defraud users.

There are two main types of chain letter:

Letter chain belt