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If you got this email 11 years ago, Researchers want to know

newscientist.com — Researchers at Cornell University want you to check your 1997 emails. They've been tracking an email chain letter about US National Public Radio that was first sent sometime that year, by asking volunteers to send them old copies of the message.they're also tracing an email petition about the most recent Iraq war,first sent in 2003

Who dugg this? Made popular May 26, 2008

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  • spookybill, on 05/26/2008, -0/+72Yeah, I'm sure I saved that 11 year old chain letter - along with all the other spam I've gotten since then.
  • Ocelot13, on 05/26/2008, -4/+64quick...someone send them an email with a rick roll as an attachment
  • rmetzger, on 05/26/2008, -0/+49Just give me a moment while I use Gmail Custom Time.
  • lordwow, on 05/26/2008, -0/+27Man, that was before Gmail. No one had the space to keep those kind of emails around.
  • yaddayaddayoda, on 05/26/2008, -0/+19But... will Bill Gates send me $1000? I haven't gotten my check yet.
  • wilhel1812, on 05/26/2008, -3/+19is 1997 11 years ago? wow!
  • mooseofshadows, on 05/26/2008, -0/+12I believe you mean, "quick... EVERYONE send them an email with a rickroll as an attachment."

    I mean, let's use the digg effect here, guys.
  • dawpa2000, on 05/26/2008, -0/+11Instructions:
    http://mail.google.com/mail/help/customtime/index. ...
    "You'll only be able to send email back until April 1, 2004, the day we launched Gmail."
  • slapded, on 05/26/2008, -0/+9all i cared about in 1997 was step by step re-runs
  • inactive, on 05/26/2008, -2/+10Time-travel experiment? Looking for paradoxes?
  • petebert, on 05/26/2008, -2/+9so apparently email petitions dont work, dang...
  • Kratos76, on 05/26/2008, -0/+6my .edu address from 1997 that I checked using PINE does not exist any more.
  • Ocelot13, on 05/26/2008, -0/+6i was able to find the nonbastardized version of digg.... almost brought a tear to my eye, it was glorious... it had tech stories all over the front page
  • argo2d, on 05/26/2008, -0/+51997?! Congress can't even stop a year's worth of email from being -ahem- misplaced!
  • kshakir, on 05/26/2008, -1/+5Dugg.

    Found 4 copies of this chain letter in the old tgz archives. The last one was received in 1999 with 857 entries.
  • joot2112, on 05/26/2008, -0/+4The world will always have "death, dying and destruction". That doesn't mean you should stop dancing, sleeping, eating, smiling, and mental or physical masturbation. What would your life be like if you were to wait until the death and destruction stopped to think about anything else? You might as well become a monk.
  • aukxsona, on 05/26/2008, -0/+4Yeah, well I just cleared my spam folder to make sure.
  • goon5000, on 05/26/2008, -1/+4Note to self, Cornell not as good as advertised
  • inactive, on 05/26/2008, -0/+2It wasn't word wrapped?
  • CreativeGuy, on 05/26/2008, -0/+2Testing social engineering is great. We can learn a lot from a dummy, so to speak. But at the end of the day, who cares?!!!
  • Khaless, on 05/26/2008, -1/+3Hmm Jon Kleinberg wrote my undergrad Algorithms textbook!
  • queuetue, on 05/26/2008, -0/+2I actually had a copy of the PBS one, saved from 2005.
  • c4mden, on 05/26/2008, -1/+3Damn, I had a copy of that stuffed in my archives from September of 1996. Interesting study...
  • flashback99, on 05/26/2008, -0/+2So this is what lesser universities get up to and call research.
  • inactive, on 05/29/2008, -0/+1 They should be studying people who have had the same OS install for 11 years instead.
  • Kratos76, on 05/26/2008, -0/+115 lines... that's my kind of article!!
  • drugged, on 05/26/2008, -0/+1Your brand of comedy doesn't seem to be catching on.
  • Chris4, on 05/28/2008, -0/+1All my spam goes into the spam box and I'm sure it does for most other people, so you must of done something wrong.
  • mal1964, on 05/26/2008, -2/+3I just got it yesterday.
  • VVCephei, on 05/26/2008, -3/+4Wow. 1997... I feel old.
  • dontlookleft, on 05/28/2008, -0/+1a link to a link! good job dude!!
  • joegibes, on 05/26/2008, -1/+2That's the beauty of Gmail -- I have 2 gigabytes of spam in my inbox.
  • JMellissa, on 05/27/2008, -1/+2I got one of them but I don't have it any more. I don't usually keep e-mails longer than it takes to read them and possibly reply or forward.
  • spammishking, on 05/27/2008, -0/+1Gold star for me, I got the dirty work reference
  • craiginct, on 05/27/2008, -1/+1A bulk email about PBS - it went straight to the spam (or trash) folder fer sure
  • dombi, on 05/26/2008, -1/+1Yep, I got one of them as well with about 500 entries.
  • diggopolous, on 05/27/2008, -1/+1MAKE MONEY FAST
  • mentor972, on 05/27/2008, -1/+1I thought Bill Gates had email tracking software that could track forwards down. That's what most of the forwards I get say. Why do they need my old email to track it down if that's the case? I'm still waiting on that trip to Disney World that he promised if I forwarded it to 10 people.
  • sarahlarowe, on 05/27/2008, -0/+0*Of course* one of the researchers is a Carleton guy. How ***** pretentious.
  • Cherubim, on 05/26/2008, -2/+1Use the Wayback machine to find it, amongst other stuff:

    http://www.archive.org/

  • Kratos76, on 05/26/2008, -3/+2my .edu address from 1997 that I checked using PINE does not exist any more.
  • splinter09, on 05/26/2008, -3/+2Oh yeah, just a sec let me check my mail box....to see if I still have spams that I got 11 YEARS AGO.........
  • Ydnar723, on 05/27/2008, -1/+0Oh man, I HAD a copy of that too...umm yeah and then somehow my finger slipped and hit the delete button. Yup happened with all that other junk mail I got too. Wish I could help.
  • sovietninja, on 05/26/2008, -6/+4This is older than the internets. Buried.
  • thefloss, on 05/26/2008, -9/+7I'm just wondering how a 15-line article got dugg.
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