Peetster

Claim: You can receive any of the following rewards from various companies by simply forwarding an e-mail message to your friends:

Cash from Microsoft
Free merchandise from Nike
Free trip for two to Walt Disney World or $5,000 cash from Disney
Free clothing from the GAP
Free computers from IBM
$25 gift certificates from Abercrombie & Fitch
$25 gift certificates from Old Navy
$50 gift certificates from J. Crew
Free cases of M&Ms from Mars
$25 gift certificates from Outback Steakhouse
Free cars from Honda
$50 gift certificates from Bath & Body Works
Free CDs from Columbia House
Free cases of soda from Coca-Cola
Cash from AOL Time Warner
Cash from EMI
Free cell phones from Nokia
Free cell phones from Ericsson
$50 gift certificates from Victoria's Secret
Cash from the Newell Co.
Cash from RH Power Inc.
$50 gift certificates from Cracker Barrel
Free champagne from Veuve-Clicquot
$50 gift certificates from Applebee's
Cash from Bill Gates

Status: False.

Origins: No, you're not going to be receiving money, merchandise, or free trips from Bill Gates (or anyone else), no matter how many people you forward this message to. Tracing all recipients of an e-mail message is not yet technically possible, and even if it were, Bill Gates certainly wouldn't be testing software that performed such tracking by blindly sending messages out to the Internet with a promise of financial reward to the recipients.

First and foremost, e-mail tracking programs do not exist. That folks continue to fall for myriad varieties of these leg-pulls is in part attributable to netizens having caught so many references to these non-existent programs that the new hoax is able to continue building on an already partially-constructed platform of belief.

(As with every other technological issue, the statement "e-mail tracking programs do not exist" becomes less and less true every day. It is possible in some cases to determine who has read a particular mail message, but there is no method of doing so that will work with all the myriad of e-mail programs out there or keep track of who forwarded the message to whom.)

Once again, e-mail tracing programs do not exist. Any "get something free" come-on or "help a sick kid" appeal which specifies an invisible program is keeping track of who received an e-mail and who it was then sent to is a hoax. Any such note. No exceptions. Not even ones not yet listed on this page.

Likewise, missives which offer no explanation of how the e-mails are being tallied are also hoaxes. Unless you are e-mailing a copy to a central tabulating point every time something is forwarded on, nothing is being counted, traced, tracked, or any other verb that would result in you getting free cargo pants from the GAP or inspiring an unnamed millionaire to donate just a little bit more towards the care of an injured child.

The Bottom Line: No matter which incarnation of this silliness is received, the principle is the same: there's still no such thing as an e-mail tracking program that will keep a tally of how many times a message is forwarded and then report the results back to a central tabulator. And there's still no free lunch -- big companies aren't going to hand out fabulous vacations, $1000 bills, free trendy clothes, new computers, cases of candies, wads of cash, or new cars just because someone with a functioning Internet connection does them the favor of forwarding an e-mail. Though at first blush, participating in such pie-in-the-sky wishfulness appears perfectly harmless, such participation only serves to clog up already overtaxed resources. Oh yes, it does one other thing -- it gives the idjits who cooked up these frauds a great big laugh at your expense.

Source: Snopes.com