Email has completely changed our world. People can send letters to friends within seconds. It's improved business and made moving easier. People are saving lots of money on postage every year.

But email has also changed the amount of crime and junk mail. People spam random email accounts all the time, just for the fun of it. And though you may not know it, you have probably spammed someone in the past. Because Chain Letters are a form of spam.

Chain letters have been around for a long, long time—the first was written before the 18th century! The classic form of a chain letter is on paper and usually contains directions to send the letter on, sometimes to send money somewhere. Then there might be a list of stories about people who have sent the letter on and gotten good luck—or people who haven't, and have died or had other mortal tragedy. There are hardly any pen-and-paper chain letters going around these days, but with a new type of mail comes a new type of junk mail: email chain letters. These usually have similar content, but before the message is usually a long list of email recipients.

Identifying a chain letter isn't hard. Here's an example of one. Note: these names are made up. I have left the email address spaces blank, to protect the privacy of people who may actually have the email addresses that I made up.

From: Emily Wazowski To: Betty; George Brown; lenette; Olivia Graen; Sammy Burlem; memmy Sent: Sat, October 10, 2009 11:24:57 AM Subject: FW: FWD: Fw: Read This Alone

From: Josh Green; To: Salomi Buar; Aubrey; Greg Storm; Uncle Bill; tom; bobo; Emily Wazowski Sent: Thursday, Oct 8, 2009 2:25:41 PM Subject: FWD: Fw: Read This Alone

From: Michelle Arthur To: Amy; Fred Mar; backyard boyz rule; Jhopher Shein; Josh Green Sent: Monday, Oct 5, 2009 11:32:14 AM Subject: Fw: Read This Alone

If you want luck forever Just read this letter And send it on Read all the way through REMEMBER: THIS IS REAL Katie Mitchell of Orcot, Washington received this email the night before her wedding to a man she was in deeply in love with. She deleted it without reading it. The next day, she was killed in a freak car accident while driving to the chapel to get married.

Joe Bouman of Tampa, Florida received this email one day before a big exam. He read it and sent it on, but to only one person. He failed the exam and was kicked out of his college.

Sarah Laker received this email and sent it on to 25 people. A week later, her boyfriend whom she had been dating for 5 years proposed. She is now living a happy life with her 2 kids and successful fashion boutique in New York.

YOU DELETE THIS EMAIL, THE THING YOU MOST LOVE WILL BE TAKEN AWAY FROM YOU AND YOU WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO BE TRULY HAPPY. SEND IT ON TO 15 OR MORE PEOPLE AND YOU WILL HAVE A GREAT LIFE. SEND IT ON TO LESS THAN 7 PEOPLE AND YOU WILL BE INFLICTED BY BAD LUCK TOMORROW. THIS IS REAL!!!!!!!!!! – Love from Michelle – Peace out, Josh – Emily Wazowski

Some chain letters are nicer than others, but they all include the message to forward them on. In the made-up example above, I kept the email addresses at the beginning and signatures at the end to a minimum, so you wouldn't have to read through pages and pages of them, but in a real chain letter there are usually lots more. Most people just hit the “FWD” button, hardly thinking about it, and send it to everyone they know. Sending these kind of letters is just rude. It takes up a ton of space in people's inbox, and the message usually isn't nice or fun to read. As soon as you get one of these emails, you should delete it. Never send it on. As for the messages that promise terrible things for your luck, your love life, and your family and friends, they're fake. The stories about “victims” are just flat-out lies, designed by someone with a cruel sense of humor and too much time. Nothing good or will happen to you if you send the letter on, but there are many bad things that could happen.

1. Your friends could get mad at you for cluttering their inboxes
2. You endanger yourself and everyone that has gotten the email in the past and will get it in the future. Not because of bad luck or a supernatural power, but because you display your and everyone else's email address to countless people, some of whom may be malicious hackers and spammers who would send random and harmful emails to your account, some of which might even look like they came from your friends.
3. If you download files that may be attached to the emails, evil viruses can take over your computer and your accounts on everything you do online.

You can help stop chain letters and spammers by doing a couple simple things. If you get a chain letter from a friend, send them an email back. Do not reply to the chain letter, simply delete it and compose a new email to your friend. Tell them that you would rather not continue getting emails like this, and explain why chain letters can be harmful and why they're just rude. This is an example of something good to say:

Hey, *YOUR FRIEND'S NAME*! I was just checking my inbox and noticed an email chain letter from you. Please stop sending me these, because there's no real point to them except to clutter inboxes, make people feel threatened, and potentially harm them. I love talking to you, but chain letters are just not good ideas. If you keep sending them on, you might endanger yourself. By the way, (start talking about some of your friend's news, for example “how did It go at the recital?” or “how is your dog doing?”)

If you get a chain letter with something nice in it—for example, a sweet picture, or an inspiring poem—it's ok to send the part you liked on to your family and close friends. However, don't just paste everyone into the "to" box—use the "BCC" box and delete everything except for the actual content. That includes all the email addresses listed beforehand and the message to forward it at the end. This might sound cheesy, but if you're truly worried about a message you've gotten in a chain letter, tell your mom or dad or older sibling. There's no such thing as bad luck and nothing is going to happen to you because you did or didn't forward an email. If a message makes you feel uncomfortable or depressed, tell someone. Chain Letters are rude and annoying, but there are ways to stop them. You can help, and even though it might not seem like much to not forward an email, check this out: If you send an email to 10 people and those 10 people send the email to another 10 people and those people send the email to 10 people and so on, after only a few days the email could spread to over a million people. But you can stop it, just by not sending it on.