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Prix1997
Prix 1987 - 2007

 
 
Organiser:
ORF Oberösterreich
 


DISTINCTION
MMF / Make Money Fast
Rolf Schmidt


"Make Money Fast" by Rolf Schmidt is an open plattform, which enables the user to trace back spam chain letters to their origin.

MMF stands for "Make Money Fast". If you've read Usenet or owned an e-mail account for any amount of time, you've run into these messages that pollute newsgroups and fill your mailbox. "Read this twice...then do the math!" they exhort. "I almost let this slip through my fingers!". And so on. The text tells you to send cash to the people on the list of names, add your name to the bottom, and spam it yourself via Usenet or e-mail. If you do this, the letter claims, you'll be rich beyond your wildest dreams.

Of course, they're nothing but old-fashioned chain letters. They're illegal virtually everywhere, they don't work, they're annoying, they waste network bandwidth, they insult your intelligence, and perhaps worst of all, they've upset the lives of their hapless victims who have found themselves mailbombed, kicked off of their ISPs, hassled by government authorities, and worse.Experienced netters refer to this garbage as MMF because an early, popular variant suggested that its victims spam it with the title "Make Money Fast".The MMF Hall of Humiliation contains plenty of pointers to other sites which combat MMF by carefully explaining why MMF doesn't work, and the penalties suffered by participants, in a calm, rational manner.

But, despite the hundreds of resources available and the fact that chain letters are expressly prohibited by most ISPs, the problem is worse than ever. So, I've decided to take another approach: severely embarrassing the would-be scammers who waste my time and yours.