Walmart Fire Charity Hoax

Summary:
Email claims that AOL will help pay the medical expenses of a child badly burnt in a Walmart fire if the message is forwarded to others (Full commentary below).

Status:
False

Example:(Submitted via email, Sepetember 2004)

A sister and her brother were inside the new Walmart built in town. The sister at six years of age, the brother seventeen years of age. The brother was fixing to buy a present for his little sister on her birthday, but as soon as they were fixing to leave she had to go to the bathroom. Her brother showed her where it was, he started to look at some earrings she would probably like for her next birthday. As he started to buy them he saw people running from the end of the store screaming and yelling with fear. Before he new it he smelled smoke and saw fire, he ran to his little sister as fast as he could but when he got to the bathrooms they were already on fire. He new he had to get out as fast as he could to get help. But when the firetrucks arrived it was already to late. Two days later the family got a call from the hospital saying they have someone there by the name of sandy. They asked "How did you get this number"? The hospital said she was holding a purse in her hand with a card that said her name and number on it. The family drove to the hospital to see thier little angel. While they looked at her, they noticed her arm was almost all the way burnt off, and her face was so burned it needed surgery. But the family didnt have enough to cover the bill.

So now the need you to help out!

Note: Every time you send this to three people aol will take away $2.00 off the hospital bill.

DO NOT DELETE! AOL IS TRACKING THIS!

Commentary:
The Walmart fire hoax is just one in a long line of absurd and pointless charity hoaxes. The email presents the sad, and totally fictional, tale of a six-year-old girl who was badly burnt in a Walmart fire. It informs recipients that the child's family needs help to cover medical expenses. Like similar charity hoaxes, this one claims that the email is being tracked and that money will be donated every time the email is sent to others. In this case, the company supposedly doing the donating is AOL. While AOL does indeed direct some funds to charity, it certainly does not base these donations on how many times a specified email is forwarded.

This hoax began hitting inboxes during 2003. The absurd claim that AOL is tracking the email is enough to identify it as a hoax immediately. Another indication of the email's status as a hoax is the telling lack of details. The child is identified only as "Sandy", other family members are not named at all, and there is no indication of when or where the fire took place.

As stated, a charity campaign based solely on the forwarding of an email is exceptionally unlikely. However, if such a campaign did actually take place, verifiable details and reference information would almost certainly be included in the message.

The concept of individual emails being "tracked" is one shared by a number of hoaxes. The only way to "track" a message would be to embed some sort of code in the email and it would have to be continually forwarded in HTML format for the code to continue collecting and submitting data. The logistics of tracking an email that could ultimately be forwarded thousands of times are clearly problematical at best.

In any case, tracking an email in the way described would raise all sorts of privacy issues and it is highly unlikely that any ethical organization would knowingly participate in such a practice.

Write-up by Brett M.Christensen