Chain Letter Research Project - Request from Gemma Brown

Summary:
Message from Gemma Brown requests recipients to forward chain letter emails to help a research project about Internet spam. (Full commentary below.)



Status:
False

Example:(Submitted, August 2006)


Commentary:
This email message asks the recipient to help a project conducting research into email trends and patterns by forwarding chain emails of all kinds to a specified address. The message claims that, by examining thousands of forwarded emails, researchers will be able to collect accurate data on the types of messages that are circulating around the Internet.

However, the supposed "research project" is almost certainly nothing more than a spammer's underhand tactic to gather email addresses. Despite the claim in the message that the project is based over "the next year", versions of the message have been distributed since 2004 and the promised results have never been made available. Details in the messages vary, including the name of the researcher and the quantity of chain emails required. Earlier variants (see example below) claimed that the research was part of a university project and identified the researcher as "Kerry Jones". The messages specified a target of one million chain emails. The university conducting the supposed research was not named and the message listed only a Yahoo email address. A free web-based email address would be a very doubtful choice for a legitimate university project.

More current versions claim to be sent by a person called "Gemma Brown" and specify a target of 500,000 chain emails. These drop the "university" references and use a series of email addresses belonging to the domain "research-project.org". However, the messages contain no information about the organization conducting the alleged project. Moreover, the website "research-project.org" still contains no content other than a generic "site under construction" message even though it was created back in May 2005. It seems very unlikely that a legitimate research organization would neglect to make more information about the project available via their website or other means.

Given the lack of any information collaborating the "research project" claim, I have long suspected that the message was a ruse to collect email addresses for spamming purposes. When people forward an email, they often neglect to trim previous email addresses from the message. Thus, the message can "collect" email addresses as it travels and may ultimately contain dozens or even hundreds of email addresses. If such a message is forwarded to "Gemma" she (or automatic software designed for the purpose) could then extract all these addresses and use them to send unsolicited advertising material. Over the last few years, thousands of people around the world have undoubtedly forwarded messages to "Gemma" in good faith, thus enabling the collection of a very large number of email addresses.

To test this theory, I created a new email account and forwarded a hoax email to Gemma Brown as requested. The email address was not used to send any other messages, nor was it given to anybody else. Several days after the message was forwarded, the account received an email from "Who-Remembers-Me.com" (see example below) claiming that "a friend" had entered the email address into the site's "tell a friend" form. Given that the only "friend" that had this email address was "Gemma Brown", it is clear that the address was harvested from the message I forwarded to her.

I then forwarded a second chain email to "Gemma" in which I had purposely included two more of my email addresses. These addresses were positioned and formatted so that it would appear that I had forgotten to remove them before forwarding the message. Within two weeks of forwarding the message, both of these email addresses had received identical unsolicited "Who-Remembers-Me.com" emails. The original address also received a second "Who-Remembers-Me.com" message.

Who-Remembers-Me.com is a service that supposedly allows members to find out information about old friends. While the initial registration is free, members are required to pay a fee before they can search the site for information about lost friends. The service has been identified in numerous spam complaints and was the subject of a 2006 adjudication by the UK's Advertising Standards Authority.

Even in the highly improbable event that there actually is such a research project, it would be simply unforgivable for its instigators to use email addresses from participants to send unsolicited email. It is almost certain that the alleged research project is completely bogus and the request message is just a dirty spammer's trick to harvest valid email addresses.

If you receive "Gemma Brown's" message, I strongly advise that you do not comply with her request.

Partial Copy of Who-Remembers-Me.com message:
Older "Kerry Jones" example (Received February, 2005):
References:
How to Remove Previous Email Addresses in Email Forwards
Google Group: Sightings of net abuse
ASA Adjudication

Last updated: 13th September 2006
First published: 30th August 2006

Write-up by Brett M.Christensen