# Those silly email petitions

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/those-silly-email-petitions/82987>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [September 21, 2001, 11:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/those-silly-email-petitions/82987 "2001-09-21T11:12:15Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e19adc/32.png) [@Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Barbarian)\
**Post date:** [September 21, 2001, 11:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/those-silly-email-petitions/82987/1 "2001-09-21T11:12:15Z")

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You know what I’m talking about-- that glurge that slams into your inbox asking you to add your name to the cause (whatever the cause is) and then spin it off to everyone you can think of. They’re supposed to ultimately end up at Someone Of Importance who will look at this mystic list of names and then Do Something About It.

Has anyone, ever, anywhere, done anything after receiving a list of email names that could be completely faked? Heck, can it be proved that one of these colon-bursting morsels of spam has actually made it to Someone Of Importance?

Oh, you can always go check out one example [here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?postid=1633450#post1633450).

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**Author:** ![NutMagnet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ea5d25/32.png) [@NutMagnet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NutMagnet)\
**Post date:** [September 21, 2001, 11:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/those-silly-email-petitions/82987/2 "2001-09-21T11:40:08Z")

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good points Barb’

Even if well-meaning people legitimately “signed” it, how does one know its used for its intended purpose? It’s all too easy to change the content of an e-petition after the names have been added.

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**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\
**Post date:** [September 21, 2001, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/those-silly-email-petitions/82987/3 "2001-09-21T12:04:51Z")

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They are often started by spammers (as are hoax virus warnings) as a way of getting new names for their database;

for example;  
[li]Spammer sends out weepy glurge fiction about a dying child who will get 1 penny from McDonalds towards his treatment for every time the email is forwarded.[/li][li]One hundred people forward it to ten of their contacts[/li][li]One thousand people forward it to ten of their contacts[/li]…  
[li]Eventually, quite a few copies of many branches of the forwarded email end up coming back to the spammer (just because it has propagated so widely)[/li]Since nearly all email apps include the recieved text in the reply, the spammer is able to ‘harvest’ a huge number of email addresses from the message body.

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**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\
**Post date:** [September 21, 2001, 12:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/those-silly-email-petitions/82987/4 "2001-09-21T12:06:17Z")

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(or sometimes they ensure that they will get the mail back by including a bit telling you to send it back to them when there are 100 names on the list).