Ahh the chain letter, innocent and well-meaning, and now available by regular mail and in electronic form. Chain letters were fun when I was kid, tempting when as a young adult I was promised untold wealth, and annoying when I received seventeen forwarded emails from my relatives each time I opened my email box. (Blocking the offending kin took care of that one.) Now however, a chain letter has entered my realm via a new route - business correspondence. I quickly learned a great way to ferret out the veracity of the letter and want to share the experience and lesson with you.

This particular letter told the story of a 9 year old boy who was dying of cancer and had a wish to make it into the Guinness Book of World Records by collecting the most "business cards". When prompted by a colleague to visit the website www.snopes.com I searched the name of this child and found out that although the boy existed, he is now cured (his prognosis was never terminal), he made it into the record book, and is now a healthy 28 year old man living in the United Kingdom. This letter had obviously taken on a life of its own. What shocked me is that the information included in the letter bore witness to the fact that over 350 businesses had been sent the same chain letter by the 19 local businesses that included their "sent to" lists with the letter. Keep in mind that these well-meaning folk or their employees took the time and bore the related expense to pass it on.

The same thing that shocked me also impressed me. I am proud of the heart that the West Michigan business community shows each time they respond to requests like this letter expressed. There are a multitude of examples of business leaders responding to both the needs of individuals in times of personal hardship, and to the needs of the charitable organizations that serve ongoing needs in our community and beyond.

That said; let me encourage you to use a resource like www.snopes.com to check out a request like the one listed above. Not only does it cost a company valuable time and resources to put out the response that these 19 companies did, but it has also resulted in huge quantities of unwanted mail and email being received by organizations like the Make-a-Wish Foundation . In the 17 years this particular letter has been in circulation it is estimated that over 2 million pieces of "snail-mail" have been sent to the non-profit organization on behalf of this one child.

By the way, the nine year old subject of the letter did make it into the Guinness Book of World Records in 1991 for having received the most "greeting cards". I noted that "greeting cards" had morphed into "business cards" in my letter but I was happy for him all the same. The record book has had to discontinue this category and others that are similar because of the mail headache's it caused to persons and organizations. So by all means keep giving, but be careful of any solicited requests made by email or by snail-mail, use the available resources to verify the facts before becoming another link in a chain.

The reason I write this is that we, Micro Visions, Inc. and several Micro Visions clients and business associates are among those included in the long list of recipients of this hoax. A major portion of our business involves implementing methods to prevent spam and assorted junk email that wastes our client's time and money. While the hoax chain letter discussed above came via the US postal Service, the lesson learned applies across the board whether email or snail-mail.