My Life With IT

Whenever we receive emails claiming that by forwarding it to a certain number of people, you will get free stuff after a few weeks. Now, this reminds me of those online surveys that state you can earn real money in a month and loads of it too. Just by working from home. How true are these “free” stuff? Let’s take a new email I had received from a friend who was asking on how to forward that email to the mass and the only person who is supposed to receive a CC can see the effort done. I’ll dissect the contents in that email here.

Dear All

Please pass on to all your friends and relatives the following mail from Sony Erricsson.

Sony Erricsson is giving away phones for free. Sony Erricsson is trying word-of-mouth advertising to introduce its product and the reward you receive for advertising for them is a free phone free of cost. To receive your free phone all you have to do is to send this email out to 8 people (for a free Sony Erricsson j200i) or 20 people (for a free Sony Erricsson k400i WAP).

Within 2 weeks you will receive a free phone. (They will contact you through your e-mail address).

Please mark a copy to:-
anna.swelam@sonyerricsson.com

Suspicious points noted:

1. Notice the spelling of Erricsson? It’s supposed to be Ericsson with a single “r”.
2. SE J200i is a very old model now. Just read the specifications here. Most likely, this phone can be found in 2nd hand shops.
3. There’s no such model as SE K400i. There’s K700i, K500i but no K400i.
4. Sony Ericsson is most likely to advertise via the newspapers and TV ads rather than word-of-mouth.
5. How many free such handphones, if they truly have, can they give out?
6. Even if this Miss Anna Swelam exists, she would be very busy trying to consolidate all the emails.
7. There is no contact number or address in the email given for queries.

The subject of the email was pretty clever too: Sony Erricsson - Promotion. Now, this would distract most of us from actually scrutinising the contents for their authentication. Free stuff plus promotion equals greed.

The only thing I see is good is that the consistent mis-spelling of Erricsson.