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Click The Hugging
Bear and Donate to Research for Breast Cancer-Fiction!
Summary of the eRumor The short email says to go
to a website where you'll watch a bear and by visiting the site, be
helping donations come in from Avon for breast cancer research.
The Truth
This one has a story behind it.
First, the animation of a hugging bear that used to be posted at the
link in the email is no longer there.
Instead, you get a message from the owner of the site saying that if
you came to the site to help fund Avon breast cancer research, it
won't happen...and that he's taken the animated bear off the site.
The bear animation was originally on a site belonging to Avon
Cosmetics.
Avon says it was part of the company's commitment to raising money
for breast cancer research.
The hugging bear was raising funds for the Avon Flame Crusade
Against Breast Cancer that supported the Canadian Breast Cancer
Initiative.
For each click of the link, ten cents was donated.
It reached its goal, however, in 2002 and the hugging bear was taken
down.
A college student who liked the animation put a link to it on his
website, but somehow it became part of an eRumor that claimed that
if you go to his site, it'll help breast cancer research, which was
not true.
As of this writing, Avon has begun another fund-raising project
using the bear.
In this one instead of a hugging bear, it's a bear at the end of a
tug-of-war rope and the animation shows a tug-of-war and says that
for each click, ten cents if being donated to breast cancer
research.
Avon began a campaign in 1992 to raise funds for fighting breast
cancer and has donated more than $300 million.
Updated 11/4/04
A real example of the eRumor as it has
appeared on the Internet:
This site is nice and easy. No forms. Just watch the bear
give money to cancer research. Who doesn't want to do that?
10 cents will go to breast cancer research from Avon
each time this link is opened:
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