More Email Tracking: The Gap Giveaway

One of the many alert readers who forwarded me a copy of this week's hot bit of Netlore was Katie Doyle, who added the comment:

Here's the latest hoax I've seen around that's not listed on your Website. It's a play off of the AOL/Netscape merger, I believe. However, when I received the hoax, there were over 100 names and email addresses. Thus, there's a lot of people who actually believe in it.

Does anyone else detect a wistful "Say it ain't so" between the lines of that message?  (Sigh.)

Unfortunately, it is so – plenty of people believe the preposterous chain letter you're about to read is true. I've received upwards of two dozen copies of it during the past week.

The obligatory debunking:

In case anyone has any doubts, this is a hoax. I feel silly even having to point them out, but... here are a few reasons to disbelieve:

1. The firm of Abercrombie & Fitch has existed for over a hundred years. It was owned for a time by The Limited (from which it was fully divested last year), but there have been no recent mergers.
2. There is no such thing as email tracking. Nobody can monitor how many times you forward this or any other chain letter. Nobody would want to.
3. Would someone please show me where The Gap has announced a "beta test" of any new clothing lines?
4. The Gap has its own Internet domain (http://www.gap.com). Why would it conduct business through a Yahoo! email address? (All email sent to gollygap@yahoo.com is returned "undeliverable" with explanation: "This account has been disabled or discontinued.")
5. For anyone who hasn't gotten it by the time they reach the next-to-last paragraph, the message reveals itself as a joke with the statement: "I started this a month ago because I was naked and couldn't get a date." Yuk, yuk, yuk.
6. It's plainly a parody of a similar email hoax that appeared last month (and is still circulating).

Some sound advice...

What should you do if you receive this message? There are different schools of thought, but perhaps the most sane and practical advice is that given on the U.S. Dept. of Energy's CIAC Chain Letters home page:

If you receive a chain letter in your e-mail, either delete it or send it on to one person. That one person is your local security officer or system administrator, thereby allowing them to investigate and warn their users not to pass on the letter. Do not send it to your friends and relatives because you will be clogging up the network. In addition, you lend your and your company's reputation to the message, making it appear to be authentic even when that is not the case. Hit the delete button instead and put that message where it belongs.

I can't possibly improve on that thought.

'Email Tracker' Hit Parade

As I mentioned, the current chain letter is a parody of one that surfaced just last month. But that one, in turn, was a take-off on earlier hoaxes dating back to November 1997. For those unfamiliar with this ever-popular theme in Net folklore, here's a guided tour of "email tracking" history:

• Bill Gates $1,000 Giveaway
  November 1997 - This one actually comprised three different messages
• Nike/Microsoft Giveaway
  February 1998 - Nike offers free merchandise for help "beta testing" Microsoft's email tracking software
• AOL 'Hacker Riot' Warning
  April 1998 - Hackers threaten to use email tracking to harass AOL members
• Another Hacker Threat
  April 1998 - Very similar to the Hacker Riot warning
• AOL Death Threat
  April 1998 - More juvenile hijinx on America Online
• Easy $$$ from Nat'l Banks Everywhere
  July 1998 - As if email tracking itself weren't silly enough
• Disney/Microsoft Giveaway
  August 1998 - Best known of them all... Disney gives away millions for no good reason
• Free Beer from Miller Brewing Co.
  April 1999 - Miller uses email tracking to distribute millions of free six-packs for the millennium.
• Microsoft Combats the AOL/Netscape Merger
  May 1999 - Email tracking returns home to Microsoft