Is Bill Gates Really Sharing His Fortune?
Today I received, for the nth time, a forwarded email which says that Bill Gates is sharing his fortune. All you need to do is forward the message and you would get hundreds of dollars every time your message has been forwarded. Normally my mind would instinctively intruct my mouse to delete this message as soon as I saw the premise on Subject line. Not this time around. What I find amusing for this particular email is that this time it has come from someone that I have high regard. This made me pause for a while and asked - is there is really merit to this email that this person would spent his time forwarding this email to several friends- even putting his reputation at stake for that matter. So I allowed my inquisitive nature to take over and attempt to put an end to whatever mask of validity this highly dubious claim possesses.
There are several versions to this email but the most recent one that I received is:
Dear Friends,
Please do not take this for a junk letter. Bill Gates is sharing his fortune. If you ignore this you will repent later. Microsoft and AOL are now the largest Internet companies and in an effort to make sure that Internet Explorer remains the most widely used program, Microsoft and AOL are running an e-mail beta test.
When you forward this e-mail to friends, Microsoft can and will track it (if you are a Microsoft Windows user) for a two week time period. For every person that you forward this e-mail to, Microsoft will pay you $245.00, for every person that you sent it to that forwards it on, Microsoft will pay you $243.00 and for every third person that receives it, you will be paid $241.00. Within two weeks, Microsoft will contact you for your address and then send you a cheque.
Regards. Chinu! I thought this was a scam myself, but two weeks after receiving this e-mail and forwarding it on, Microsoft contacted me for my address and within days, I received a cheque for US$24,800.00. You need to respond before the beta testing is over. If anyone can afford this Bill Gates is the man. It's all marketing expense to him. Please forward this to as many people as possible. You are bound to get at least US$10,000.00.
First, to kill this head on, here is an official message from Microsoft:
REDMOND, Wash., May 12, 1999 - Recently an email has been circulating on the Internet about a new "email tracking system" from Microsoft.
As you may have suspected, this is a hoax and did not originate from Microsoft.
Microsoft does try to investigate the source of these hoaxes and take appropriate action. However, many times the hoaxers take elaborate steps to shield their true identities and we cannot identify them. Privacy and security are very important to us here at Microsoft, and we work every day to build great software for the Internet that keeps information safe, secure and private.
We regret any inconvenience this may have caused you.
For a double kill, here is official statement from Bill Gates:
Even more annoying than spam, in some respects, are hoaxes. I'm acutely aware of this because my name was recently attached to a hoax email message that was widely distributed.
People embellished the fraudulent email over time, as it was forwarded from electronic mailbox to electronic mailbox, but an early version read this way:
"My name is Bill Gates. I have just written up an e-mail tracing program that traces everyone to whom this message is forwarded to. I am experimenting with this and I need your help. Forward this to everyone you know and if it reaches 1000 people everyone on the list will receive $1000 at my expense. Enjoy. Your friend, Bill Gates."
The bogus message was widely forwarded, which surely led to some disappointment from people who hoped to receive $1,000 for passing along what was essentially a chain letter.
The email is obviously a hoax, and a recycled one at that. Bill Gates is still very much in good sound of thinking so as not to share his fortune with random folks involved on spreading chain letters. To this day, no merger between Microsoft and AOL has been announced. Microsoft had been pursuing Yahoo but even that is still an unlikely event as negotiations had frequently been breaking down. Moreover, Microsoft cannot track the chain letters you forward, nor will Bill Gates pay you for replicating this absurd message.
I have two words for you: DELETE IT!
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