As time went by, "Letters of Misfortune" reappeared with the spread of the Internet and cell phones, using these new means of communication as a medium, they became "chain mails".
As the medium changed, so did the content of the letters. For example, something like "Please send this e-mail to X people in X hours. You can check that the e-mail was sent from a computer, so please do not stop it..." or "I am requesting information on the culprit of a certain incident. Please make the same appeal to X or more people within X days."
Or even, "...This is an experiment for a TV show, I'm looking into the process of sending out an e-mail and having it return to me. Please send this e-mail to X people or more..."
Not to mention, there are also chain mails such as "...A computer virus named "XXX" is spreading. To prevent this, please delete the file "XXX" from your computer.", which if followed, would lead to you damaging your computer's functioning.
Because of how easy it is to send chain mails compared to letters, they circulated at a much faster pace, sometimes even overloading networks and shutting down e-mail servers.
However, some chain mails weren't circulated for mischievous purposes. In 2002, an e-mail asked people to donate blood to a specific university hospital because a woman in its care needed a certain blood type for an operation.
According to the e-mail, 40 people cooperated in donating blood, leading to the operation's success. This is a wonderful story, but it had an adverse effect as well, as the hospital received a series of inquiries about this e-mail, which hindered their medical examinations.
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