Life is a Highway...

E-Mail Hoax Using Hurricane Katrina Disaster

I received this email from a friend just today with the contents of the e-mail pretty much asking me to 'sign it' and forward it to my friends. This already smells of an e-mail hoax. Here's the contents of the message:

Hello,

For those who don't know me real name it is Brenda or (loily) for some of you. Over here in New York, our med. staff had come up with a plan to help the ones in need. We are willing to give 18 hours of our weekend ( and we don't get paid ) to help the people that are in the path of the storm "Katrina". We have a had a talk with the Red Cross to help us and they said that for email that we send that they were going to donate $.50, you don't have to pay anything. We are not asking for much, just to email this to everyone you know. You can help Rebuild their cities and make a lot of peoples live easier. Many families have had to leave their homes because of this storm. Please sigh your name in the bottom and help us!

when this email has reached 50 names plesae send it to Loily_bb@hotmail.com thank you guys a lot!

First thing that caught my eye was the obvious mispellings and bad grammar:

For those who don't know me real name it is Brenda ...

Please sigh your name in the bottom and help us!

Another mistake, it's Hurricane Katrina and not Storm Katrina.

The other thing that triggered a flag in my mind was that "... Red Cross to help us and they said that for email that we send that they were going to donate $.50 ..." My first thought was -- okay, I've seen too many e-mail hoaxes to know that this is pretty much a hoax; why would Red Cross donate money when they themselves would the organization using the money to help rebuild. They're asking for donations, why would they be making donations to themselves?

This is nothing more than someone's sick social engineering joke to take a serious situation like this hurricane disaster and turn it into an e-mail hoax, clogging up the internet with more junk e-mail.

If you see this e-mail, simply toss it and tell your friend that e-mailed not to do it again.

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2005.09.06 Update
This entry was picked up by:

LockerGnome (Chris Pirillo)
ScamBusters.Org

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