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Visit a
Web Address And See Your Baby Pictures Or
an Instant Snapshot Online-Fiction!
Summary of
eRumor This
message comes in various forms. Some simply give a web address
that says it has a picture of you posted. Others pretend to
have installed a feature that can actually take your picture while
you look at your screen and ask you to sit still for a moment, then
click the screen to see the picture that has been taken. The
most popular one, however, claims to have collected nursery pictures
from thousands of hospitals and suggests that yours may be one of
the baby pictures in its database. You are invited to visit
the site for free to view it.
The
Truth Anybody who has proceeded to any of the websites in these emails has
discovered that instead of seeing a picture of themselves, they end
up viewing a humorous picture. In some cases, it's an adult or
baby chimpanzee. In others, is a picture of a grotesque human
being. In some, it's a picture of a baby making an obscene
gesture.
Many of our readers, however, have been wary and have not visited
the web addresses, and have written us to ask how anybody could have
secured so many baby pictures or what kind of technology could use
your computer monitor to take your picture. The concerns, of
course, are based on the desire for privacy.
Most of the time, if you visit the site, there will be no harm
experienced.
One of the sites, offering baby pictures, however, is really
slimy.
First, it says you have received the email because you are on their
email list. None of the people who forwarded us the emails
they received was actually on their list and none of the emails was
sent to the person's email address...so the emails were sent in the
form and technique of spammers.
Then if you go to the site, you are asked for your name, birth date,
and birth place, which many people prefer not to simply hand out
over the Internet.
Then after you've seen the funny picture, you are invited to submit
other people's email addresses so they can enjoy the joke as
well.
When you try to exit the site, you are besieged with pop-up screens
of advertisements that feels like an assault.
Finally, at the bottom of the email is a link you can click to be
removed from their mailing list if you wish. It claims to be
programmed to "automatically" remove your email address,
but that's untrue. When you click the link, you are asked to
input your email address which, of course, is necessary since most
of the emails were not sent to any specific address. If you
input your email address to be removed, the chances are you are
actually giving them your email address and ending up on a list.
A real example of the story as it has been circulated (we have removed the
web address because, frankly, we don't care to give them visibility):
According to our records, we have reason to believe that your baby pic is
stored ONLINE! It may be in your best interest to NOT assume that this is
some sort of prank or practical joke.
[web address].com has retrieved and stored over 90 million baby pics
with the help of hundreds of participating hospitals and several
other sources.
After 28 months of preparation, this breakthrough website
has finally been released, and YOUR baby pic may be among the millions of
other baby pics stored in our extensive web database.
Access is completely free.
Simply click on the link below. Then follow the directions to pass this
site along to all of your online friends, family and co-workers to see if
their pics are available too!
You are receiving this message because you signed up for [web
address].com's notifications and your participation qualified you to
receive our best offers and most important announcements!
If you wish to be deleted from this list...
Simply click on the following website... which has been specially
configured to remove your email address.
!!!!! WARNING!! DO NOT CLICK BELOW UNLESS YOU WISH TO BE
PERMANENTLY
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