I received great news recently!  In just a few weeks I could be one-quarter of the way to becoming a millionaire.  That’s right for an initial investment of only $7.00 I could be living in the lap of luxury and hobnobbing with the jet-set.  I might even one day live a lifestyle whereby I will be able to buy a home that could be featured on MTV’s ‘Cribs’.  (I always wanted a solid gold crapper.)
 
The news came in the form of a letter I received in the mail.  The return address was a p.o. box in Mississippi.  My address was affixed to a label on that envelope.  Now usually I avoid opening suspicious looking letters like this but since I do have relatives in Mississippi, I thought I would open it.  The letter details a plan, which it states is endorsed by no less than Oprah and ABC’s ‘20/20,’ whereby placing my name on a mailing list could eventually lead to this fortune.  The letter first tells the story of a retired attorney whose client first received this same letter.  His client, unsure that the letter was legit, gave it to this attorney to inspect.  The attorney inspected the letter and told his client that he thought the letter was illegal.  The attorney then says that he made a small change to the letter in order to make it legal and thus the road to riches began for him and his client.

Here is the road the two took and of which I am invited to join:  Seven names and addresses are on the letter.  The letter asks that each person who receives the letter send out a dollar to each person on the list.  (That is what is supposed to make it legal.)  Then the sender is to ask those people to be put on their mailing list.  The sender is then to remove the person at the top of the list and put his own name at the seventh position.  He then sends out 200 copies of this same letter.  After that he is to buy a mailing list from Datafax, Inc for 49.95 so that more people can be contacted.  Ahh the bite.  Datafax, Inc. is the actual money maker in this scheme.

Now even though this scheme promises to help me be able to fulfill my second boyhood dream of being a millionaire (my first is doing both Audra and Judy Landers.  Look up the names kids), I decided not to follow this route.  It should be apparent to anyone who has half a brain - and I have at least that - that this is a bogus scheme.  But it raises several interesting questions about the information marketplace.  It makes me wonder what other information they or other companies have.  For example, I know that I did not give a company named Datafax my address or permission to mail me but this whole scheme obviously originated from information they acquired.  All over the Internet unlisted phone numbers can be obtained with just a few mouse clicks; personal histories are just moments away at any turn.  In this time when we argue about the size and role of government the bigger issue is the wholesale trading of personal information.  Information is power and the more information people have about us the weaker we are.  Data mining and email harvesting those are the real dangers to our liberty.  This flow of information fuels phishing schemes, cyber stalking and other dangers to our society.

This letter insulted my intelligence by expecting me to fall for this half-assed scheme.  It also troubled me to see how Datafax got my info in the first place.  I wondered how many people would, bolstered by the promise of riches, participate in not only handing over their 49.95, but also in shipping around other people’s personal information.  I wondered this as the following week I received the same letter from another person from another state.  The letter has gone viral.
 
After looking into ways to slow down this deluge of personal information I have found several ways I am trying:  One is to contact The Direct Marketing Association’s mail preference service at P.O. Box 643, Carmel NY, 10512 and ask to be deleted from mailing lists.  I have not heard back from them yet.  Additionally, I have put myself on my state’s no-call list through our attorney general’s site and am in the middle of suing a violator.  Now obviously this kind of crap can’t be completely stopped as evidence by my unbelievable offer, but I personally get a lot less of this crap since I became more knowledgeable about the personal information market  So keep your chin up folks.  Don’t take any wooden nickels or fall for any pyramid schemes.