The Jessica Mydek hoax was a popular
chain letter
A chain letter is a message that attempts to convince the recipient to make a number of copies and pass them on to a certain number of recipients. The "chain" is an exponentially growing pyramid (a tree graph) that cannot be sustained indefinite ...
, circulated by hoaxsters, to play on the sympathy of credulous readers, and get them to respond, so as to build a
sucker list A sucker list is a list of people who have previously fallen for a scam such as a telemarketing fraud, lottery scam, high-yield investment program, get-rich-quick scheme, or work-at-home schemes, or, as used by charities, someone who made a donation ...
.
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The letter was first observed in 1997.
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The hoax
The letter represented itself as a letter from a seven-year-old girl with terminal brain cancer.
She requested the email be forwarded to the recipients' email contacts, with a carbon copy to an email address the letter represented as that of the
American Cancer Society
The American Cancer Society (ACS) is a nationwide voluntary health organization dedicated to eliminating cancer. Established in 1913, the society is organized into six geographical regions of both medical and lay volunteers operating in more than ...
.
The American Cancer Society denied involvement in the campaign and determined there was no such child.
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The letter promised readers that the American Cancer Society had corporate donors who would donate three cents for every
carbon copy
Before the development of photographic copiers, a carbon copy was the under-copy of a typed or written document placed over carbon paper and the under-copy sheet itself (not to be confused with the carbon print family of photographic reproduc ...
of the campaign letter forwarded to a new person.
Impact
According to Theresa Heyd, author of ''Email Hoaxes: Form, Function, Genre Ecology'', the Mydek hoax letter had the three classic elements scholars recognize in a sympathy hoax letter: the ''"hook"'', the ''"threat"'', and the ''"request"''.
[ Heyd points out that the name ''"Jessica Mydek"'', when read aloud, is a ''"rude onomastic pun"''—another marker of hoax letters.
Heyd asserts that the Mydek letter is the first instance of an email hoax to request those forwarding it to also forward a copy to a specific email address—enabling the hoaxer to engage in email address harvesting of the contacts of those who fall for the hoax.
This hoax was also used as an example of a typical cancer victim hoax in several ]computer security
Computer security, cybersecurity (cyber security), or information technology security (IT security) is the protection of computer systems and networks from attack by malicious actors that may result in unauthorized information disclosure, the ...
textbooks.[
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Samantha Miller, author of ''E-Mail Etiquette: Do's, Don'ts and Disaster Tales from People Magazine's Internet'', called Jessica Mydek hoax letters ''"a classic of the genre"''.[
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References
{{Reflist, 2
Confidence tricks
Email
Hoaxes in the United States