Joe Wein
Fighting spam and scams
on the Internet

Home / Blog / About us
Spam
419/Nigeria
Online fraud
jwSpamSpy
Contact

Email Spam Filter:
jwSpamSpy
Try it for free!

Google
 

Hoaxes and Urban Legends: Forwarding email will help pay medical bills for burned baby

Whenever you receive an email that urges you to immediately forward that mail to everyone you know, there is a very good chance the email is a hoax. Please take the time to verify the message by doing a Google search before you send it on to anyone else. In most cases when you take an arbitrary sentence from the message and google for it you'll end up with many hoax warning pages as the result.

The following email is one such hoax. It includes a picture of a baby who suffered horrific burns in a house fire. The email (either in English or in Spanish) claims three cents will go towards paying the baby's medical bills for every person you forward this email to. The baby is real and so are the burns, but the claim about raising cash by merely forwarding the email is completely false.

Please review:

Known email hoaxes:
The AOL/Microsoft money giveaway hoax
The "809" area code hoax
The burned baby hoax
Amy Bruce / Make A Wish hoax
The "Invitation" virus hoax
The "Life is beautiful" virus hoax
The Oliver North / Osama bin Ladin / Al Gore hoax
Send spam to the South African police to save children
Exxon/Mobile gas boycott
Bush IQ report / Lovenstein Institute hoax
Monkeyman935 warning hoax
Kidney Theft urban legend
Ashley Flores, 13 (missing child hoax)
How to detect a two-way mirror
$50 call-back spam
Cooking an egg with cell phones
"Osama captured" / "Osama hanged" virus
A tale of Japanese Lizards and Love
The $5 killer
Audi A8 made out of silver
ATM PIN code entered in reverse will call the police
Mars spectacularly close to Earth on August 27
"An old lady walked into a Grocery Store..."
"Allah or the Lord Jesus Christ?"
"PDA+GSM Palm Treo 650 dan Treo 680 dan Treo 750"
Bayer drug contains HIV
Forward or lose your Hotmail account
Chinese "fix" jet engine with seatbelts
AOL will donate five cents for baby's brain cancer operation
Ericsson distributing free laptops
Art Bell Filipino hate letter
Hypodermic needles on gas pump handles
"Through a rapist's eyes" / Crying Baby theory
Sheryl Crow / John Hopkins Cancer update about plastic bottles
Children buried alive in Egypt, saved by Jesus
Missing child - Regina George Muñoz
Papaya Juice - (NOT!) A Cure for Dengue
Hiroshima 64 years later (is actually Yokohama)
Lou Dobbs video on Immigration/Amnesty bill (dead since 2007)
Heart River picture, North Dakota


Example chain letter (English version):

Alexandra came out of a fire alive, but now has to fight for her life and a normal future. She is 14 months old and she has burnt skin all over her body, damage facial bones (as a result of very high temperature). She does not have half of her face. She is in hospital in Krakow-Poland and one of the best specialist is looking after her. However she still has to go through many surgeries and then long rehab. Unfortunately her parents do not have any more money.
Therefore we are asking for your help. For each forwarded email her parents will get 3 cents. Please help them and forward that email to as many people as you can!

How many ways can we count our blessings?

Example chain letter (Spanish version): Subject: LEELO X FAVOR QUE ES MUY IMPORTANTE

Ella tiene 14 meses de edad y tiene to la cara y el cuerpo
quemado dado a la altas temperaturasElla no tiene la mitad de su cara. Esta en el hospital Cracow- en Polonia, con el cuidado de uno de los mejores especialistas del hospital. Sin embargo ella todavía tiene que pasar por muchas cirugías y rehabilitacion. Desafortunadamente sus padres no tienen más dinero. Por lo tanto estamos pidiendo su ayuda.
Para cada email remitido sus padres conseguirán 3 centavos. Ayúdeles por favor y remíte este email a tanta gente como usted puede, a sus contactos de hotmail o yahoo
Es un mensaje cortesìa de Revista Virtual por la hermandad y humanidad

jwSpamSpy
Are you sick of spam too? Do you want it stopped now?
Try jwSpamSpy, the spamfilter we use to track the spammers!
Free 30-day trial version available now!