The Price of Chain E-mails

We've all gotten enough chain e-mails to know the drill. Prosperity and good luck await if you forward this to 10 friends, but be prepared for doom and gloom if you break the chain. If you're like me, you take a minute to scan the e-mail, roll your eyes, and delete it. Even if you consider these e-mails a nuisance, you probably think they're harmless, right? Well, not really.

Security experts say that these e-mails are a common scam that can lead to identity theft. Many chain e-mails are created by scam artists trying to collect personal information. By passing chain e-mails on to your closest friends, you've given the scammers a host of new e-mail addresses. And that's when the real trouble can start.
Using the e-mail addresses they've collected, scam artists send out spam e-mails looking for sensitive information, like passwords, credit card or banking information, or social insurance numbers. I know I'm not the only one who has received countless e-mails from my "bank" claiming to need my log-in information for security reasons. These e-mails often provide a link to a fake website, and even offer a fake toll-free number. They can be pretty convincing.

Of course, nobody thinks they'll fall for this kind of fraud, yet Canadians were bilked out of almost $60 million in 2009 through mass marketing scams. And those are just the losses reported to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre. I don't even want to think about how many scams go unreported.

And who knows? It could have all started with a chain e-mail. So the next time you get one, please don't pass it on to your 10 closest buddies. And make sure you talk to the friend who sent it to you and get yourself taken off their chain e-mail list.