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June 29, 2004
History of chain letters
While my email-tracer hoax lacks that particular coda, it shares a remarkable number of attributes with paper chain letters. In them, we find testimonials from experts and beneficiaries. ("Mr. Frankling D. Roosavelt [sic] was elected for the third term as president of the United States 52 hours after he mailed this letter," claims one piece from 1949. In fact, Roosevelt was elected to a third term in 1940, and by 1949 he was dead.) We find the age-old promise that "this is not a junk letter" and the perennial threat of bad luck for breaking the chain ("If you ignore this, you will repent later"). And then there's the long list of addresses, the last one belonging to a friend: the altruism of the gesture, the expectation of reciprocation.
...
Years passed. His email-tracing hoax became notorious, one of the top 10 of all time, according to antivirus firm Sophos. Mack remained anonymous. I asked him why he didn't lay claim to his creation. With just a couple sentences, he'd launched one of the greatest social critiques of our age. He'd shown that when it comes to technology, people believe that anything can happen - that invasion of privacy is inevitable - and that even those who don't like it are willing to benefit from it.
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Posted by thdyck on June 29, 2004
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