One of the widely circulated chain letters originated in 2009, where the chain claimed that Facebook would charge for the platform, unless users clicked on a fake protest page. But every so often, chain letters contain links to malware, or sites that expose the user’s content. Most of the time, the risks are low, and chain letters are just annoying. And the transparency offered by sharing or liking adds a degree of authenticity that is necessary to their survival.” To this end, chain letters are actually really well suited to social media because so little effort on the part of the reader is required to pass them on. “Chain letters hit the right chord of shock, or trigger the right degree of anxiety, which prompts the reader to share the stories or information they contain. We cover how to protect yourself on social media in this post.Īn article for Anthropology in Practice on Scientific American summarizes the why quite well: The questions typically contain common security questions that can be gathered and used for malicious purposes. Get to Know You: The brief questionnaires, cleverly disguised as an exercise in “getting to know your friends”, is a social engineering and scammer dream. Show You Care: Long prose about various topics, which at the end, the reader is instructed to repost “just to show who’s paying attention” or “to see who cares”. Something for Nothing:Repost and you will win a fortune from Bill Gates / Disney is giving away tickets to everyone who reposts / claim the copyrights to your content by reposting, so Facebook can’t steal it. The clickbait and tabloid-like headlines gather people’s attention, especially those who are superstitious and will repost “just in case!”. Gain Luck or Avoid Bad Luck: Repost or you will have bad luck forever / someone will die / you will have years of good fortune. What are the different kinds of chain letters? Now chain letters are passed along through social media and take on several forms and risks, which we cover below: The first known chain letter dates back to 1888, which consisted of a letter soliciting dimes, and instructing the readers to make copies and put them in the hands of a specified number of recipients. Chain letters, as most of us remember them, used to be annoying emails that displayed hundreds of people’s email addresses as it was forwarded from person to person (blind carbon copy was a Great Unknown back then, evidently).
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