My first encounter with the incredible credulity that people attribute to any crap thing showing up in their email inbox came when I was working at the National Security Agency. Within the Agency at the time there existed a proto-news group affair that was called ENLIGHTEN if memory serves. This was confined to the TS/SCI networks of the agency intranet itself with some select technical groups mirrored in by the tech guys.

     The Agency was a pretty tech savvy bunch but email, the internet, and newsgroups were still new items for many. One day I returned to the company building to see that the Battalion IMO (Information Management Officer (the poor man’s sysad)) had posted a post about a virus that would somehow rip all the details out of your computer wholesale and fire them off to some shadowy organization. The list of supposed virus ability was stunning including the ability to “dial your bank account and take yours money” (yes the misspelling was in the warning). The list alone made me furrow my brow since in 1995 (as now) those ability were (and are) largely impossible or at least wildly, stupifyingly, and fantastically improbable. My suspicion was confirmed when I read the supposed name of the virus that was posted in a very public place by our well intention but very gullible IMO. The name of the virus? Deeyenda Maddick. (Read it slowly syllable by syllable folks).

     Returning to the building I posted the hoax in ENLIGHTEN so that people wouldn’t be frightened by such an amateurish fraud. After posting this I read in another ENLIGHTEN group about the “Blue Star Tattoo” that “My friend’s neighbor’s kid’s cousin” got in their high school in “Upstate New York” (There is never a concrete name or traceable source for these you see). The Blue Star tattoos were supposed to be temporary tattoos laced with LSD by canny drug dealers to hook the kids on LSD without the kids even knowing they were taking it. How alarming! How utterly false. How utterly devoid of credible information. Yet the post was followed by literally hundreds of NSA employees thanking the poster for this vital warning.

     I have seen versions of the Deeyenda and BST scam pop up hundreds of times since then sometimes even in their original form more than a decade later!

     Just a tiny bit of critical thought can save you from looking like a credulous tool to the people you spam with this crap. If it sounds so dangerous that you are amazed that the news networks haven’t interrupted programming to air it maybe you should think a little harder before you hit that FWD button and waste people’s time and bandwidth. Stop feeding the email trolls. Leave that to the breathless AOL girls forwarding their “Tru Luv Chain Letter That Rilly Werks! LOLZ”. <spit> </spit>

PS. By the way… Microsoft isn’t paying anyone to forward emails either… just in case you were wondering about the validity of that one too.

PPS. I am amazed that I made it through that without swearing.