Editing List of Internet phenomena (section)

==Email==
{{See also|Virus hoax|Chain-letter}}
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* [[Bill Gates]] Email Beta Test – An email [[chain-letter]] that first appeared in 1997 and still circulates. The message claims that [[America Online]] and [[Microsoft]] are conducting a [[beta test]] and for each person one forward the email to, they will receive a payment from Bill Gates of more than $200. Realistic contact information for a lawyer appears in the message.<ref name="snopes_microsoft_aol">{{cite web|url=http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/nothing/microsoft-aol.asp|title=Microsoft/AOL Giveaway|author1=Mikkelson, Barbara |author2=Mikkelson, David P. |date=16 December 2008|website=Snopes|access-date=4 February 2010}}</ref><ref name="st001">Crabb, Don. "Bill Gates: An Urban Legend in His Own Time." ''Chicago Sun-Times'' 15 February 1998</ref>
* [[Craig Shergold]] – A British former cancer patient who is most famous for receiving an estimated 350 million [[greeting card]]s, earning him a place in the ''[[Guinness World Records|Guinness Book of World Records]]'' in 1991 and 1992. Variations of the plea for greeting cards sent out on his behalf in 1989 are still being distributed through the Internet, although Shergold himself died in 2020, making the plea one of the most persistent [[urban legend]]s.<ref name="Kingman_Daily_Miner">{{cite news|title=Flood of postcards continuing after Craig Shergold cured of brain cancer.|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=932&dat=19980706&id=cqpPAAAAIBAJ&pg=5141,1126862|access-date=14 June 2012|newspaper=[[Kingman Daily Miner]]|date=6 July 1998|archive-date=19 May 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220519033058/https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=932&dat=19980706&id=cqpPAAAAIBAJ&pg=5141,1126862|url-status=live}}</ref>
* [[Goodtimes virus]] – An infamous, [[virus hoax|fraudulent virus warning]] that first appeared in 1994. The email claimed that an email virus with the subject line "Good Times" was spreading, which would "send your CPU into a nth-complexity infinite binary loop", among other dire predictions.<ref name="good_times_faq">{{cite web|url=http://fgouget.free.fr/goodtimes/goodtimes.html|title=Good Times Virus Hoax F.A.Q|last=Jones|first=Les|date=12 December 1998|publisher=fgouget.free.fr|access-date=4 February 2010|archive-date=24 July 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110724111951/http://fgouget.free.fr/goodtimes/goodtimes.html|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="virus_hoaxes">{{cite web|url=http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/virus.asp|archive-url=https://archive.today/20130104193649/http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/virus.asp|url-status=dead|archive-date=4 January 2013|title=Virus Hoaxes & Realities|author1=Mikkelson, Barbara|author2=Mikkelson, David P.|website=Snopes|access-date=4 February 2010}}</ref>
* [[Lighthouse and naval vessel urban legend]] – Purportedly an actual transcript of an increasingly heated radio conversation between a U.S. Navy ship and a Canadian who insists the naval vessel change a collision course, ending in the [[punch line|punchline]]. This [[urban legend]] first appeared on the Internet in its commonly quoted format in 1995, although versions of the story predate it by several decades.<ref name="Snopes lighthouse page">{{cite web|last=Mikkelson|first=Barbara|author-link=Barbara Mikkelson|title=The Obstinate Lighthouse|url=http://www.snopes.com/military/lighthouse.asp|website=[[Snopes.com]]|date=18 March 2008|access-date=17 September 2011|archive-date=7 November 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211107072435/http://www.snopes.com/military/lighthouse.asp|url-status=live}}</ref> It continues to circulate; the [[Military Officers Association of America]] reported in 2011 that it is forwarded to them an average of three times a day.<ref name="MOAA lighthouse blog entry">{{cite web|last=LoFiego|first=Mathew|title=Classic Bilge: The Lighthouse vs. The Aircraft Carrier|url=http://www.moaablogs.org/battleofthebilge/2009/03/classic-bilge-the-lighthouse-vs-the-aircraft-carrier/|publisher=Military Officers Association of America|date=29 March 2009|access-date=20 September 2011|archive-date=27 December 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161227153442/http://www.moaablogs.org/battleofthebilge/2009/03/classic-bilge-the-lighthouse-vs-the-aircraft-carrier|url-status=live}}</ref> The Navy has a page specifically devoted to pointing out that many of the ships named weren't even in service at the time.<ref name="USN lighthouse joke denial">{{cite web|title=The Lighthouse Joke |author=United States Navy|author-link=United States Navy |url=http://www.navy.mil/navydata/navy_legacy_hr.asp?id=174 |date=2 September 2009 |access-date=17 September 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110921055917/http://www.navy.mil/navydata/navy_legacy_hr.asp?id=174 |archive-date=21 September 2011 }}</ref>
* [[Make Money Fast|MAKE.MONEY.FAST]] – One of the first [[Spam (electronic)|spam]] messages that was spread primarily through [[Usenet]], or even earlier [[Bulletin board system|BBS]] systems, in the late 1980s or early 1990s. The original email is attributed to an individual who used the name "Dave Rhodes", who may or may not have existed.<ref name="Rudnitskaya_Alena">{{cite book|last=Rudnitskaya|first=Alena|title=The Concept of Spam in Email Communications.|year=2009|publisher=GRIN Verlag|isbn=978-3640401574|page=6|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=72d9PCtm7pQC&q=make.money.fast&pg=PA6|access-date=2013-07-10}}</ref> The message is a classic [[pyramid scheme]] – one receives an email with a list of names and is asked to send $5 by [[postal mail]] to the person whose name is at the top of the list, add their own name to the bottom, and forward the updated list to a number of other people.<ref name="Gil_Paul">{{cite news|last=Gil|first=Paul|title=The Top 10 Internet/Email Scams.|url=http://netforbeginners.about.com/od/scamsandidentitytheft/ss/top10inetscams_9.htm|access-date=15 June 2012|newspaper=[[About.com]]|archive-date=3 November 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151103172709/http://netforbeginners.about.com/od/scamsandidentitytheft/ss/top10inetscams_9.htm|url-status=dead}}</ref>
* [[Neiman Marcus]] Cookie recipe – An email [[chain-letter]] dating back to the early 1990s, but originating as [[Xeroxlore]], in which a person tells a story about being ripped off for over $200 for a cookie recipe from Neiman Marcus. The email claims the person is attempting to exact revenge by passing the recipe out for free.<ref name="neiman_marcus_cookie">{{cite web|url=http://www.snopes.com/business/consumer/cookie.asp|title=(Costs a) Fortune Cookie|last=Mikkelson|first=Barbara|date=24 June 2009|website=Snopes|access-date=4 February 2010}}</ref><ref name="De Vos">{{cite book|last=De Vos|first=Gail|title=Tales, rumors, and gossip: exploring contemporary folk literature in grades 7–12|publisher=Libraries Unlimited (A Member of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.)|location=Westport, Connecticut|year=1996|pages=21–22|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=M8bvN93y-fIC&q=Tales,+Rumors,+and+Gossip:+Exploring+Contemporary+Folk+Literature+in+Grades+7-12+neiman+marcus&pg=PA21|isbn=1-56308-190-3|access-date=4 February 2010}}</ref>
* [[Advance-fee scam|Nigerian Scam/419 scam]] – A mail scam attempt popularized by the ability to send millions of emails. The scam claims the sender is a high-ranking official of Nigeria with knowledge of a large sum of money or equivalent goods that they cannot claim but must divest themselves of; to do so, they claim to require a smaller sum of money up front to access the sum to send to the receiver. The nature of the scam has mutated to be from any number of countries, high-ranking persons, barristers, or relationships to said people.<ref>{{cite news | title = E-mail puts new life into old Nigerian Scam | work = [[Chicago Tribune]] | date = 29 April 2002 | first = Dave | last = Payton | page = 2}}</ref>