Break the Chain Looks at Online Chain Letters

The road to a full mailbox is paved with good intentions. And you'd be amazed (or possibly not) at how often those good intentions take the form of chain letters that are mistaken or just plain hoaxes.

BreakTheChain.org ( http://www.breakthechain.org/ ) aims to stop chain letters by giving facts and information about the many pleas and missives that crowd the average in-box. There are a variety of ways that you can check out the almost 400 "chains" on this site -- you can browse them by category (categories include To Your Health, Something for Nothing, and Virus Warnings) or you can search by keyword. There's also a forum, a newsletter, a FAQ, and a library of articles.

The information about each chain letter varies, but the ones I looked at were pretty thorough. Information includes a typical copy of the chain letter (they tend to mutate) commentary about it, and often comments from official sources debunking the chain letter (along with hyperlinks) and sometimes links to other well-known debunking sites, like Snopes.com. If you've got a correspondent who can't seem to stop forwarding junk chains, bookmark this site.

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