Forward an Email or Die–Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:
This email, said to be popular among young people, says you need to forward it to 15 people within fifteen minutes or you will die. It claims that the creator of the email has a program that will track everyone who did or did not send it and track down your address. It also claims that 5 people have died by not sending it.
The Truth:
The version of this that was forwarded to us had one of the longest lists of accumulated email addresses we have ever seen. We ran the page through a program that isolates and counts the number of email addresses. There were 3,180 of them…on one page.
It’s a hoax. Like other “email this or die” messages, it presents no evidence of what it claims. Most importantly, there isn’t any method by which the originator could track every forwarded email, document those who did not forward it, and detect their addresses.