It's called a "geometric progression": 5 x 5 = 25; 5 x 25 = 125; 5 x 125 = 625; 5 x 625 = 3,125; 5 x 3,125 = 15,625.
Think about that the next time you get an e-mail message that says: "Send this to five of your friends." If each of them in turn sends it on to five more, it will only take five steps to approach the entire population of Cornell's e-mail system. And only five more to hit every e-mail address in the world and then some.
There are people at Cornell who apparently haven't done this math, and Cornell Information Technologies has received enough complaints about chain e-mail that it has taken the very unusual step of sending a warning to every person with a university net ID.
"What prompted us to do this was that in September we had to send 15 warnings to individuals who had sent chain e-mail," said Barbara Skoblick, security officer for Cornell Information Technologies. "Almost all were to students, but a lot were to staff as well. It results from the growth of use of e-mail in general, from people who never used a computer or e-mail before."
Don't let CIT's warning deter you from sending the latest joke or thoughtful essay around to your office mates or your e-mail pen pals. What concerns them is mail that specifically asks you to forward it to a number of others, who will then be expected to do the same. The most familiar example may be the "Make Money Fast" pyramid scheme, but chain letters that don't ask for money are still against university policy. (See box at end of story for some examples.)
Chain mail can overload the e-mail system, and it overloads the human beings who run the system, Skoblick explained.
"Each time somebody sends a chain letter, we get multiple complaints," she reported. "On a pyramid scheme we'll get 50 to 60 complaints about each one. It takes up our time, uses up resources. The help desk shouldn't be spending time responding to chain-mail complaints."
Ordinarily people who send chain letters will just receive a note from CIT explaining why they shouldn't do it. But serious cases will be referred to Barbara Krause, judicial administrator. Typical penalties are oral warnings, written reprimands or community service, according to Krause. "Theoretically for faculty or staff the penalties could include suspension from university duties for a period not to exceed one month, dismissal or termination," Krause said. "We do not typically revoke computer privileges. For students at this point that's equivalent to suspending them, because so much of the work is online.
"I think some people are concerned that this is an effort to regulate content," she noted, "but there are lots of good reasons for it. Most universities have policies prohibiting chain mail because it is a burden on the system and a nuisance to users. People who receive these messages through commercial providers have to pay to download them."
"We get complaints from other universities," Skoblick added. "We have very good servers and a good system, but a site with a little old time-sharing machine has limited disk space. One or two chain letters can wipe out all their space and really disrupt their work or their studies. We are trying to be good net citizens."
Krause has a special warning for people who participate in pyramid cash schemes (in addition to the fact that they violate federal law): "People don't realize that the IRS and federal agencies poke around on the Internet these days and most pyramid schemes make reports that somebody has received $25,000. It wouldn't be a big reach for someone to be audited, or the postal service to ask about whether you sent money through the mail."
Chain mail and other violations of the university's computer-use policies are discussed on the Information Technology Rights and Responsibilities web page at http://www.cornell.edu/Computer/responsible-use/Index.html
Like the Energizer bunny, some e-mail chain letters just keep going and going. Here are some common ones:
Make Money Fast. This is the classic pyramid scheme, where you put your name at the bottom of the list and send a dollar to the person at the top. It almost invariably includes a statement to the effect that it's perfectly legal, but in fact it is a violation of federal law. According to the United States Postal Service, sending chain letters through the mail (or delivering them in person or by computer, but mailing money to participate) violates Title 18, United States Code, Section 1302, the Postal Lottery Statute. Regardless of what technology is used to advance the scheme, if the mail is used at any step along the way, it is still illegal. And besides, it doesn't work. Further information is available from the U.S. Postal Inspector's Office at http://www.usps.gov/websites/depart/inspect/chainlet.htm .
The dying child. A child somewhere is trying to break the world record for number of business cards, greeting cards or e-mail messages received. This began with Craig Shergold, a 9-year-old English boy diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor, who wanted to be recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records for receiving the most greeting cards. His wish was fulfilled in 1990 after he received 16 million cards. According to the Make-a-Wish Foundation, which is named in some of the messages, Shergold's tumor was successfully removed in March 1991, but the cards keep coming. Messages of this type are sometimes malicious, designed to overload someone's e-mail mailbox.
Save public television. A legitimate request for letters to Congress was circulated about a year ago, when funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was being debated in Congress. The debate is long gone, but the message continues to circulate.
Virus warnings. For over a year messages have circulated about the "Good Times" virus, more recently referred to as "Irina," or variations on that name. This is supposed to be a virus distributed as an e-mail message, and you are warned not to read the message. In fact, the warning message itself is the virus, taking up Internet bandwidth. (There is no way reading an e-mail message can damage your computer, but a program sent as an attachment to a message could contain a virus; any program you receive from an unknown source should be scanned with a virus-protection program like F-prot or Disinfectant, both available from CIT.)
Cleaning the Internet. This was popular during leap year, but continues to surface. It tells you that the Internet will be "cleaned" or "reorganized" on a certain day -- usually the beginning of a year -- and that all computers should be shut down and disconnected from the network on that day to avoid having their hard disks erased. Some people actually do it.
Holiday messages. Almost every year people are urged to send Christmas letters to some address, usually for some charitable purpose. Like the dying child, these are sometimes malicious pranks designed to mail-bomb the person whose e-mail address is listed. There are variations for other holidays. A Valentine's Day chain letter warns that if you don't send it on, "in 24 hours your heart will be broken."
Bottom line: Be suspicious of any e-mail message that asks you to forward it to others. Before you forward anything, question the person who sent it to you to find out where they got it, and if possible investigate the original source.
More information on many circulating stories can be found at http://www.urbanlegends.com.