Why is the origination or forwarding of chain mail considered an offense, if its used for a good purpose and not for some make money fast pyramid scheme?
Regardless of the purpose, chain e-mail has a catastrophic effect on shared resources. Consider this example: if you sent a letter to 5 friends, and asked each of them to pass it on to five friends, here’s how the chain would grow: after two mailings, there would be 25 copies in circulation, but after only 10, there would be 9,765,625. Even with traditional paper mail, exponential growth of this sort can result in the clogging of post office resources, which is why most countries do not permit it. Chain e-mail can clog shared computer systems to such an extent that they crash, causing potentially serious disruption to a large number of users. Since it takes only a single user to start such an exponential progression, certain types of chain e-mail can lie dormant for long periods of time, then suddenly resurface. Users who receive any type of chain e-mail should not forward or answer it; instead, they should notify University Technology Services Helpdesk, which will take steps to deal w
