The Jessica Mydek hoax is a popular chain letters, circulated by hoaxsters, to play in the credible reader's sympathy, and get them to respond so they can build a list of suckers. The letter was first observed, in the wild, in 1997.
Video Jessica Mydek hoax letter
Lies
The letter represents itself as a letter from a 7-year-old girl with terminal brain cancer. He requests the email to be forwarded to the recipient's email contact, with carbon copies to the mail-represented email address such as the American Cancer Society. The American Cancer Society denied involvement in the campaign and decided no such child.
The letter promises to readers that the American Cancer Society has a corporate donor who will donate three cents for each carbon copy of a forwarded campaign letter to a new person.
Maps Jessica Mydek hoax letter
Impact
According to Theresa Heyd, author of Hoaxes: Form, Function, Ecology Genre , Mydek's letters have three classical elements that scholars recognize in letters of sympathy: "hook" , "threats" , and "requests" . Heyd points out that the name "Jessica Mydek" , when read aloud, is "onomastic too rough" - another marker of lie letters.
Heyd asserted that Mydek's letter is the first example of email tricks to require that they forward it as well forward copies to a specific email address - enabling the hoaxer to engage in collecting email addresses from the contacts of those who fell for the hoax.
This hoax is also used as an example of cancer victim trick in some computer security manuals.
Samantha Miller, author of E-Mail Etiquette: Do's, Don'ts and Disaster Tales from People Magazine's Internet , called Jessica Mydek hoax letters "classic of the genre" .
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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