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Thinking Before Forwarding

Dear user because of sudden rush of people signing upto orkut is come to an attention that we are vastly running our of resources so with in a week any one who does not receive this scrap will be deleted of our server . We know that you are still using this account We want to find out which users are actually using their orkut accounts so if you are using your then please send this scrap to every orkut user that you can if u do not pass this scrap to anyone then we will delete your account

Just follow these simple steps.
1. Click on the "Messages Tab" in your account.
2. Click on the "compose mail" option which is the last one of the four icons you see together.
3. Select "all friends"
4. Cut and Paste this mail
5. Send it........

This is the content of the mail I received from two persons in just a couple of days, and I am sure I will get a few more copies of this in days to come. I could not help but remember Divya. Yes, Divya Singh of Siemens fame! The pioneer of spam mails, the savithri of 21st century, whose husband has managed to survive from the era of dial up connections and reached the era of broadband. I sometimes wonder why people are so scared. Or is it the ease of "Forward" button? I always see mails like these with lot of skepticism. I generally google to see if it is a hoax mail. Let me analyze the above mail.

  • If there is a sudden rush of people signing upto orkut, what will the guys at orkut be doing? The CEO would have thrown a party to all the employees! They will obviously like more people registering with them.
  • Assuming that orkut does not like lot of people signing up, they will stop the registration or else allow restricted sign-ins. Why will they delete the existing users?
  • The space taken for your account is for your details, friend list, community list, scrapbook, testimonials, lists and album. I bet, this wont take more than 10 MB per person. Do you know who runs orkut? Yes, its Google, who revolutionized mailing service with the insane act of providing a giga byte to each user.
  • Let us think for a moment that orkut will decide to delete all inactive users. They might check as to when you logged in the last time or the last time when your profile was updated or the last time you scrapped or tons of options like that. Definitely not by this message!
  • Even if orkut decides to do anything like that, wont they send these messages directly to you, instead of asking each one of you send to all your friends (thereby misusing the already "low resources" that orkut has got)
  • Still, if they delete my account, as feared by many, I will have no regrets. I would not like to be a user of some hopelessly illogical service anyways.

How about 'thinking' a bit before 'forwarding'? May Divya's memory fade away. Amen!

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Comments

Anonymous said…
Good 'THINKING' vasuki !!
May 30, 2006 6:01 PM
Vijay said…
You hit the nail on the head. i was reminded of a similar article I had posted on the subject that can be found here. I would consider myself blessed if these articles convert atleast 2-3 people and show them the path of wisdom ;-)
May 30, 2006 7:44 PM
Anonymous said…
This was really fun to read....Tell me the story about Divya Singh...i dont know about that:)
June 02, 2006 9:08 AM
Anonymous said…
Whoever has written the above comment is unreal. Coz thats what anyone who has not got the Divya Singh mail atleast a dozen times is.
Vasu, heres ur chance to spam officially.

And Vasu, this is going to be my final comment for today. Thanks for the good time pass.

I sign off(not that I had signed in :)).
June 05, 2006 6:24 PM
Anonymous said…
That's a good analysis Vasuki. You can write a post on how to de-mystify email hoaxes in general, some broad guidelines or something. These email hoaxes seem to be increasing in number everyday!
October 17, 2007 7:57 AM
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