If it’s too good to be true it’s a hoax

Hello Everyone,

Ericsson is distributing free laptops for their brand promotion. They are hoping to increase their popularity and sales by this campaign. All you need to do is send an email about this promotion to 8 people and you will receive an Ericsson T18 Laptop. However, if you send an email to 20 or more people, you will receive an Ericsson R320 Laptop.

Kindly ensure that you cc to Anna at Ericsson so that she will know you have sent the e-mail.

I know you all received a copy of this chain letter email… how many of you thought- free laptop… great, and all I have to do is send a few emails!

Now let’s examine the mathematics behind this hoax promotion. You send an email to 8 people who in turn send it to 8 people and so on. By the first sending it would be received by 64 people, then 512, then 4096, then 32768, then 262,144. The exponential growth in emails would be mean that at the next sending it would be received by over 2 million people. Clearly giving away 2 million free laptops would bankrupt any computer business.

The email you received had already been sent to hundreds of people in the chain, and then sent to everyone in our department… senders, who should have known better, included the police, local government and Southampton University.

Even if it wasn’t completely obvious from just reading the email, a quick Google search would have shown that this was a hoax… use the delete button straight away and don’t ever send these on!

Here’s another hoax email that has appeared in the departmental email today.

HOTEL KEY CARDS   Ever wonder what is on your magnetic key card?

                        Answer:
                        a. Customer’s name
                        B. Customer’s partial home address
                        c. Hotel room number
                        d. Check-in date and out dates
                        e. Customer’s credit card number and expiration date!

When you turn them in to the front desk your personal information is there for any employee to access by simply scanning the card in the hotel scanner. An employee can take a hand full of cards home and using a scanning device, access the information onto a laptop computer and go shopping at your expense.

Simply put, hotels do not erase the information on these cards until an employee reissues the card to the next hotel guest. At that time, the new guest’s information is electronically ‘overwritten’ on the card and the previous guest’s information is erased in the overwriting process.

But until the card is rewritten for the next guest, it usually is kept in a drawer at the front desk with YOUR INFORMATION ON IT!

The bottom line is: Keep the cards, take them home with you, or destroy them. NEVER leave them behind in the room or room
wastebasket, and NEVER turn them into the front desk when you check out of a room. They will not charge you for the card (it’s illegal) and you’ll be sure you are not leaving a lot of valuable personal information on it that could be easily lifted off with any simple scanning device card reader.

For the same reason, if you arrive at the airport and discover you still have the card key in your pocket, do not toss it in an airport trash basket. Take it home and destroy it by cutting it up, especially through the electronic information strip!

If you have a small magnet, pass it across the magnetic strip several times. Then try it in the door, it will not work. It erases everything on the card.

information courtesy of:  Metropolitan Police Service.

                        PLEASE FORWARD to friends and family