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Monday, May 22, 2006

Don't help Amy Bruce!

Not a day passes without millions of email boxes being spammed by something similar to this.
Hi, my name is Amy Bruce. I am 7 years old, and I have severe lung cancer ... I also have a large tumor in my brain, from repeated beatings. Doctors say I will die soon if this isn't fixed, and my family can't pay the bills.

The Make A Wish Foundation, has agreed to donate 7 cents for every time this message is sent on.


For those of you who send this along, I thank you so much, but for those who don't send it, what goes around comes around. Have a Heart, please send this.


Please, if you are a kind person, send this on. PLEASE HIT FORWARD BUTTON NOT REPLY BUTTON.


YOUR'S FAITHFULLY,

AMY BRUCE

amy.bruce@makeawish.com

(PLEASE HELP ME LIVE LIKE YOU DO)

Who can avoid reaching out to a kid? So, the impulsive response to this tearjerker, for many, is to hit the Forward button and dump this on to hundreds of their friends. Fight that impulse! (By the way, pictures of cute, African-American children work even better on guilt-ridden WASPs.)

Like ALL chain letters - and the overwhelming majority of virus warnings you get, or the requests to boycott various brands (Tommy Hilfiger is one such target, wrongly accused of racist remarks on a TV show) - this is pure unadulterated bullshit!

When you get something like this in future, just trash it! But if you feel worried or have a nagging sensation of guilt that says "it may be genuine", just copy & paste the first few words of the message into Google. In this case, for example, copy and paste
hi, my name is Amy Bruce I am 7 years old, and I have severe lung cancer
(try it NOW, if you are near a computer). You'll be led to a list of relevant sites, any of which will take you to a page with this kind of info:
Amy Bruce Charity Hoax

Summary: Email claims that 7-year-old Amy Bruce is dying of lung cancer and a brain tumour and that the Make A Wish Foundation will donate money when the email is forwarded.
Status: False
Examples: [In this section several examples of the variants of the hoax are displayed - ZAK]
Commentary: This absurd chain letter began circulating back in 1999 and is still being passed around. The information presented in the email is a total fabrication. There is no 7-year-old Amy Bruce who is dying of both lung cancer and a brain tumour. Furthermore, the Make A Wish Foundation is not donating money every time the email is forwarded. The Make A Wish Foundation would not support such an email campaign, even if it were true.

The concept of individual emails being "tracked" as they journey through cyberspace is a common theme among hoax emails. The only way to "track" an email would be to embed some sort of hidden code in the email and it would have to be continually forwarded in HTML format in order to contain the code. The logistics of tracking an email that could ultimately be forwarded thousands of times are clearly problematical at best.

In any case, tracking an email in the way described would raise all sorts of privacy issues and it is highly unlikely that any ethical organization would knowingly participate in such a practice.
Hoaxes like these also cause a lot of trouble for the charitable organizations they mention. Make A Wish Foundation had to devote valuable resources to answering queries about their supposed involvement and to set up a web page just to deal with this. I'd suggest reading it for other useful information, too.

So, I reiterate, please delete all such mail without forwarding ... saving precious bandwidth and everyone's time! But if you have time on your hands, or fingers just itching for that Forwarding Fix, or if you feel kinda empty without having done your Forward-of-the-Day, I suggest you send them a link to this post, instead!

(Regardless of whetever you decide to do, please do take my name off your SpamList. Thanks.)

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32 Comments:

Blogger insiya said...

mine two. thanks.

22 May, 2006 15:49

 
Blogger the olive ream said...

ZAK, you have touched so many nerves, I cannot even count them. I totally relate to this post. I get these same messages, along with the varied offers by some alleged African origin banks to help transfer funds from one account to another for the benefit of a percentage fee..because apparently, some old account holder has died and left millions of dollars and they can't find the next of kin so they sourced me out to help them out(from the 6 billion plus people in the world).

23 May, 2006 03:06

 
Blogger Pyschofloobicologist said...

hahahah...and u forgot the MSN e-mail...forward or else u'll have to pay for MSN's services...
Ive been receiving this mail for 6 yrs now...!!!

23 May, 2006 16:33

 
Blogger jadedprimadonna said...

I have sent the Snopes site address out to people who send those out several times, but I think the guilt thing still gets them... They just keep sending. =o(

26 May, 2006 00:12

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You know, my first thought after reading this was, how aweful...I want to help...what should I do...how can I help...then, I started looking for an address so I could mail this family a check.

Once I noticed there was no return address, I became suspicious.

Then I noticed a email address and I thought, thank God...maybe I can get an address regarding this family so I can help them and their little girl.

I had no idea this was all a hoax.

Thats a shame that someone would use such an innocent little face and serious medical conditions to swindel money out of people like
me and the other sisters in my church congregation who reach out to help the sick.

I am definetly going to refer my sistas to this web site so they can
see for themselves as I have.

sincerely,
A Child of Gods

05 December, 2006 12:31

 
Anonymous rayhan said...

if gods have children like you, what do devils have/

05 December, 2006 12:40

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Now that's a Damn shame!!

06 December, 2006 19:14

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I just got this e-mail today, and I was a little suspicious, so I decided to google it. I went to google images and typed in "Amy Bruce", and the same little african girl's picture showed up. So, my first thought was, "Oh my goodness, it is real", but then I saw the caption under one of her pictures that stated, "don't help Amy Bruce". I decided to check it out, and I am certainly glad I did.

Thank you.

07 December, 2006 23:07

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thank goodness for you guys! I almost sent it but it turned out I wanted to finish checking my email. Then I found it...Thankz for letting me know about the facts!!! everybody who thinks this is a good web page, say 'aye-aye' at the end of your comment!!!

16 December, 2006 21:09

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thank you for letting me know what was really going on!!! I was checking my e-mail and I saw it, then I finished checking out the rest of my 'mail and thank goodness I saw your link attached to this!!! evrybody who leaves a comment and is thankful for this web page, say 'aye-aye', O.K.?

16 December, 2006 21:14

 
Anonymous alex said...

well i think that this little girl really needs help and the fdact that just because she's BLACK there is no reson for pity what if she was white would the response be the dame ? she needs help and if im the only one to do it well so be it , i will send it every day if i have to

23 December, 2006 00:27

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

well, today i got this e-mail from a friend, and i wasnt sure if it was real or not, so i googled it, and an image of a little girl named Amy Bruce showed up, and i was glad I tohught it was real, but then I scrolled down and saw somthing that said,"don't save Amy Bruce!" So, i clicked on it, after reading the article, my thoughts have changed, I am glad I did see this page!

05 January, 2007 19:22

 
Blogger MariesImages said...

Thanks for the email, but how did you get my e-mail address. I got an email for AMY BRUCE right after your email.
How DID you know????

08 January, 2007 00:53

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm going to makeawishfoundation.com and investigate.

08 January, 2007 09:43

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You think no one would fall for this kind of rubbish, but they still do. I have a friend who forwards hoaxes to me on a weekly basis, so copying and pasting the fist few lines onto Google has now become second nature. This time I posted the last line instead, and got your page, so I sent them a link to your blog along with my reply.

08 January, 2007 12:50

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

In ref. to what "alex" said... Till you said something about the little girl being "black", I had no idea of her ethnic background....yet I still wasn't going to fall for that bullsh*t... so deal with the fact that this is just a hoax....even on the Make A Wish site they stated that this e-mail of Amy Bruce IS A HOAX .... look for yourself.... am tired of people always using race or sex as an excuse for not getting what they want or not hearing what they want and I'm tired of letters like this coming thru working on peoples guilt about things in life .... its just sad and pathetic... Okay...stepping of my lil' box...sorry guys

http://www.wish.org/about/chain_letters

20 January, 2007 18:20

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This website was created by a bunch of lifeless assholes. This girl is dying and she needs help! Think about if you were an abused child and you were dying because your family didn't have the money. What would you do! Whoever reads this, send it to as many people as you can and tell them to pass it along to EVERYONE! P.S, these people who made this website, screw you!

29 January, 2007 01:32

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

omg my dad allways says that i should never listen to that stuff but i never knew they were making money out of it! and tracking it. its freaking me out!

29 January, 2007 05:19

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thanks a lot, My friend sent me that e-mail and I thought it was so sad I googled it to see the home page (listed at the bottem of the e-mail) and found this!

Thanks a lot!!

05 February, 2007 01:24

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

My friends always send me these kinds of things. You know the "forward this to 10 people in the next 5 minutes and your crushes name will appear on the screen" and I even recently got the Amy Bruce one. I never fell for any of them for a second but I can't believe people have been for 8 years! Luckily I googled her before I sent it out. :) I figured people would forward it but I didn't know people would send money. Whose taking these peoples money? Thats really wrong. they were just trying to help.

12 February, 2007 03:02

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

this doesn't sound like something a little 7 year old would say "what goes around comes around"

12 February, 2007 05:32

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

whoever said "This website was created by a bunch of lifeless assholes. This girl is dying and she needs help! Think about if you were an abused child and you were dying because your family didn't have the money. What would you do! Whoever reads this, send it to as many people as you can and tell them to pass it along to EVERYONE! P.S, these people who made this website, screw you" is a frickin retard. man, how stupid can people get, it is so obvious. i have got this email like twice a year forever. whoever made this website thanks. i will show it to the people who keep sending it to me so they will stop sending it

25 February, 2007 08:33

 
Anonymous katie said...

holly sh*t you got alot of comments about this blog. Ive been getting this amy bruce e-mail for years now and everytime i see it i delete it, i cant stand emails like that. but this time i googled it and got this site, i once made a blog like this about that stupid msn is going to cost so much per month unless u send this email to 20 people... drove me in sane....!!!

04 November, 2007 09:38

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

OMG i hate dis email bout da girl coz it just wasts time 'n' money!its friken annoying but i gotta admit, i lik ceken out fake emails coz it givs me sumting 2 do! i hat chain letters dat also say if u dont send list ull hav bad luk 4 10 yrs or sumshit lik dat as well. THEY ALL JUST DRIVE ME INSAIN!!!!!

11 January, 2008 06:09

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

My friend sent me the e-mail and later she said it wasnt real. I didnt belive her so I typed up amy.bruce@makeawish.com and sure enough, it was a fake.

21 January, 2008 18:24

 
Blogger clarissa said...

i no this little girl she is my little sisters best friend i cant stand people that judge all the time amy bruce is a lovley little girl how do u think her parents feel having to read things like this all the time they have a little girl and soon she wont be here so instead of u all making comments that its fake well u go into kings lynn norfolk and look every were u will see her on posters everywere but ur all worried thats its a fake well im telling u its not i feel so sory 4 her parents to hear small minded people that can judge a small little girl that dosent have long left so u all with children how would u like it if ur child was in this situation u wouldnt so dont judge until u have seen her and spoken to her family then u will all have a different point of view im sorry but i no her and so does my 6 year old sister so its not fake honstly

17 April, 2008 03:46

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

hi umm if dis woz real wudnt amy bruce be dead by now?? im sry if it is real but i honestly cnt c how dey cud say shes gona die soon like over 8 yrs ago n shes still alive na???? she wud b 16ish now n im sry but all da evidence points 2 dis being a fake, i feel sry 4 da sick people who made dis email up u sick bas**rds

18 May, 2008 00:25

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

What happens if ou forwarded it? I only sent it to one person. Is that okay?

20 June, 2008 05:53

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

i recieved this email 3 yrs ago......EXACTLY THE SAME ONE..word for word.....how can ppl be so stupid/sick/pathetic losers to say they know her.....stuck in a time warp is she!!

27 June, 2008 05:40

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

if these people aren't lying and saying it they got it years ago and whatever, don't you think that "amy bruce" isn't dying? honestly, just think about that. ok, some person got it 8 years ago.. "amy" wasn't even alive then!! another person said they got it 6 years ago and if "amy" got cancer when she was one year old and survived this long, i think she would've pulled through.

29 August, 2008 07:52

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

i received this email today so i decided to check out the website.why would anyone want to play such a sick twisted game.if they keep doing that then when it will be true no one will believe.

23 October, 2008 01:52

 
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