Why do people forward this e-mail? Just what is it about the "E-mail Tracking Scam" that has allowed it to pervade modern culture? It is now so common that it is more of a rite of passage that every person with an e-mail address will receive the scam in some form, or one of its many spin-offs, and, hopefully, learn important lessons from it.
Here, I have hopefully identified the aspects of the e-mail that have so captivated the online world for half a decade and contributed to both its pervasiveness and longevity.
Early in the graphical internet, there were many people trying to test the limits of what this technology could do. Many people were buying computers for the first time, and for the first time in American history, they were becoming commonplace. Many people who were new to the internet had never encountered junk e-mail before on their computers that had only come out of the box several days or months earlier. It had been three years since the inception of the graphical browser, but 1997 was still just the beginning of the high-tech bubble which would encompass the world for the next several years. No one really knew what the answer was to the question of what was really possible.
The original e-mail assumed that it would be lucky if it ever made it to 1000 people. But consider, if each recipient forwarded the message to only 10 people, the goal would be accomplished after only two forwards. Like a wildfire on amphetamines, this e-mail message spread around the world in only a matter of days.
Many people were happy to send it on, curious themselves as to how many people an e-mail such as this could reach. The e-mail went through many changes and revisions during this period because of that. The "internet underground" considered the e-mail as an inside joke or an unethical experiment. People who saw it as a way to prove their superiority over the "newbies", whose who enjoyed a chuckle at others' expense, and those who were curious all make their own additions to the e-mail and sent it on to their victims, resulting in an outpouring of misplaced creativity.
Computers may be common now, but they are still new compared to other inventions. Most of the victims were, and still are, too unknowledgeable about the computers that they use every day to be able to realize that most of the claims in the e-mail are both impossible and unethical.
$1000. $4,324. $150. Who doesn't want money? And for nothing, no less. Even those sweepstakes that are received in the mail still require a third of a dollar to mail. But e-mail is different. You've already paid for it, no matter how much e-mail you send. Forwarding the e-mail costs nothing. To the reader, there seem to be no costs to banking on this gamble with very bad odds. "What have you got to lose?" asks the e-mail. Nothing, except for self-respect and the respect of one's colleges and peers.
"The first 1000." Internet auctions. Free merchandise. These were the buzzwords of the internet back in 1997. Companies desperate to start up were literally giving things away free to the first people to visit their website. Companies were selling at below wholesale to try to pull in customers. Internet auctions had so few people visiting them that the products would sell for shockingly low values. And all of this was available only to the people who got there first. To the people who browsed the internet at this time, the internet was a secret club to which they were a member. It got them special deals, special privileges, and now, they were so eager to believe, they would get free money and those who found out about it later would be out of luck, giving complete bragging rights. To people drunk on the "free internet" and those who were desperately wishing they could find the bargains that others had found, this e-mail was all to easy for them to accept without thought.
As the news media newly discovered the internet three to four years after the general public there began to be a rise in the number of reports warning of risks to one's privacy. The ideas that corporations' web sites were gathering personal information and that a person's e-mails were vulnerable to being read by anyone were both prevalent and true. People were afraid of the internet now, and this hoax played off of that fear. People thought that if the "simple" document that they read on a web site could collect information from their computer, what's to stop a "simple" e-mail, without understanding the differences between them. The main subject of the hoax was an invasion of privacy, and the recipients could feel that they were perhaps "getting the news out" by forwarding this e-mail.
The fear of Microsoft, and the iconified Bill Gates, became en vogue at the time of this e-mail, as well. Microsoft had just abandoned its near failure of IE3, and replaced it with the suddenly powerful IE4, which not only surpassed its stagnated rival Netscape 4, but also surprised the public by extending itself into the Windows shell, becoming an irreversible change. People were afraid that they would be forced to abandon their beloved Netscape and that they would be unable to keep the new IE from changing their computer. Move forward and consider the Microsoft anti-trust hearings, and the e-mail comes across as a worst-case scenario of a large company gone bad, al la "The President's Analyst". Who wouldn't forward the ominous news about a company that was in the "beta" stages of watching your every move? As the public's fears shifted from Microsoft to AOL and Intel, so did the e-mails, reflecting societies current fears about the corporations that affect their lives.