Notes:
When it comes to hoaxes that
just will not go away, you would have trouble toppling this one off the number one spot.
The variations of the infamous [this service] is overpopulated hoax is
one the oldest variations in the `You Send We Track` genre.
Most people are familiar with the variations of drivel these emails regurgitate over and over
again. The emails all claiming that a respective service (be it Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Hotmail or Yahoo) has become overpopulated, and in an
effort to free up space or accounts, the administrative/IT team of that respective service is sending out an email that requires all recipients to forward to all their
individual contacts. The email is being `tracked` and anyone who does not forward the email to all their contacts within a given time frame will face account expulsion, on the
assumed belief that the account is no longer being used.
The emails make no sense on several points.
Firstly, you cannot track forwarded email,
so even if Hotmail etc. wanted to track which accounts were not forwarding their “special” email, they could not. It is technically impossible since emails cannot contain any
automated dynamic code that can allow them to communicate with anybody when somebody receives it. Ethically dubious as well, as people would report it is as a breach of
privacy allowing a company to know who they choose to send email to.
In addition to this, companies like Hotmail and Facebook do not need to do this because
they have simpler and more accurate methods of discovering who is using their account and who is not.
Web based email businesses like Hotmail and Yahoo, for
example, have their own time limit to when a user has to login to their account. The time limits have been extended recently – if the user does not login to their account
within a certain timeframe, the account gets suspended, and then fully deleted. Because of this system Hotmail and Yahoo have absolutely no need to track forwarded emails in
this way.
Facebook and Myspace, whilst to our knowledge do not have timeframes, would easily be able to implement them if they became so inclined, which would
produce much more accurate results for much less hassle.
Despite the irrefutable facts mentioned here, people continue to forward this type of mail with the
belief they have just saved their email or social networking account when all they have done is perpetuated a hoax.
A variant of this hoax with a more sinister
side uses the same template of informing the user via email that the service has become too populated and they are looking to free up accounts, but instead of requesting the
user to pointlessly forward an email, the email requests a direct reply with sensitive account information like passwords and usernames. The information is then duly stolen by
the scammers who sent out the email. Again, no service will request their users to reply to emails to keep their accounts open. As we pointed out above, they have much more
accurate methods of keeping tabs on inactive accounts. This is an example of a phishingattack.
It truly is a hoax that just won’t die!
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