Devolle Danielle

I'm sure everybody who has an email account at least once in his/her entire lifetime, received email which requests you to forward in order to raise a certain amount of fund to help so-and-so who're sick or in really bad shape. Do you forward the mail as requested or feel bad when you didn't? Have you ever wondered whether these emails are real?

Well I received these emails all the time and sometimes when I feel pitiful for the ones who are 'asking' for help, I would forward them. However, today I did a little research and made a decision that I will not do that anymore. Here's what I found:

"1. EMAIL. “Such-and-such foundation will donate $1 for each time you forward this email!” – FALSE. FALSE. FALSE.


Before you even consider raising money for charity by forwarding emails take this thought into consideration: How the HELL is the company that plans to “donate” going to know how many times the email was forwarded? See, emails are considered private property. Nobody is allowed to enter your email unless you have given them permission. If a friend, coworker, even spouse enters your email without permission you can sue them for “invasion of privacy”.


Even when a court case arises against a suspected criminal, the company who hosts your email account (yahoo, gmail, Comcast, etc) will NEVER provide information unless a subpoena is sent requiring them to hand over the info. AND even in the event that they ARE sent a subpoena, they can ONLY give the info to a police officer/detective, lawyer or judge; again, this information falls under the privacy act and they are not allowed to give it out; NOT EVEN TO A “CHARITY”.


So with this in mind, please tell me HOW any charity is going to know what YOU do in your PRIVATE EMAIL?




BOTTOM LINE: THERE IS NO WAY TO TRACK WHAT YOU SEND…unless it is subpoenaed. Now, to take this one step further; a subpoena can NOT be sent at random. A court case has to be opened in order for a lawyer to request legal information. A subpoena costs a minimum of $600 and can cost thousands for A SINGLE subpoena. The cost of the subpoena is based on the amount of time it takes to recover the information. Meaning, if a company was to “offer to donate funds” for each email forwarded, they would need to have a reason to open a court case and send subpoenas to the email providers FOR EVERY user in the world to determine if they ever got the email and if they ever forwarded it…


This makes no sense. They would be spending billions and billions to donate a few thousand…? What?


2. TEXT MESSAGE. Again, you’ll see texts stating that popular companies will pay a penny or two for each time a text was forwarded. AGAIN, FALSE. Just like with email, cell phone records are private information that require a subpoena to be released. It is IMPOSSIBLE for any company to find out what you do on your private cellular account. You can send messages, receive messages, etc and nobody will ever know…unless there is a legal need for the information.


3. TWITTER. If you use twitter, you probably have seen people post tweets saying “Retweet this and such-and-such company will donate a penny for each RT” or “So-and-so will donate a penny for each time #topic is posted”. Twitter does not fall under the privacy act. Since Twitter posts are public record, it *is* possible, to an extent that a company *may* be able to count each time a topic was posted. However there are a few doubts I have about this actually working…



A.) Cost. In order for a company to tally the amount of times a #topic was posted they would have to pay someone to search twitter and by hand, tally up each time the topic was posted. This could be an endless job. If the company is donating a penny for each time a topic is posted, depending on how long it takes to tally the topic, they may be paying more in employee wages than the amount of the donation.


B.) Inaccuracy. What about profiles that have been blocked to the public and only allow friends to view them? A large amount of Twitter profiles are set to “private”, so I have no idea how these companies plan to tally the amount of times these people participated in “helping the cause”. How would it be fair to discount people who have chosen to keep their information private but have still helped aid in the supposed donation campaign?

C.) Why aren’t these GIANT companies ADVERTISING their campaigns? Why have none of us ever heard direct from the company who is sponsoring these campaigns that they will be donating?


When companies make large donations, they make sure it is known to the public – it’s kind of a marketing campaign. The company knows that by making a donation they will get tons of free publicity; so they make sure that they broadcast their donation all over the internet, radio, television and newspaper. If a company was planning to make a large donation based on Twitter #topics, you’d think they would announce this on their website and so on.




IN THE END…


Yes, it is likely all a bunch of scams. I have yet to see any “donation” made.


If you see an email or get a test message that talks about donations, you can always contact the company directly and ask if the donation info is legitimate. 99.9% of the time they will have no idea what you are talking about.


If you genuinely do want to help a cause, instead of forwarding scam emails or text messages, research the charity and find out what you can do to help. If you don’t have the finances to donate a dollar, then consider offering your time or expertise.


Please do not forward these scams. You are not only wasting your time but you’re also wasting other peoples time; time that could be used to REALLY help a cause.