March 12, 2002

7:10 AM

Not a hoax!?'We are in Mrs. Lentz's Computer Class at Clara Bolen Elementary in Tawa City, MI. We are doing an experiment for the art and science fair to be held in April at our school. We are trying to see where our email can travel in the space of one month.'
posted by asok (19 comments total)

Excellent, now we know the correct addresses and other search keys to add to our spam filters.
posted by shagoth at 7:18 AM on March 12, 2002

The email goes like this:

'Hello,

We are in Mrs. Lentz's Computer Class at Clara Bolen
Elementary in Tawa City, MI. We are doing an experiment for the art and science fair to be held in April at our school. We are trying to see where our email can travel in
the space of one month. We will keep track of how many
emails we get and from which cities, states and countries. We are hoping that you will be willing to help us in our project. There are just 2 simple steps that will allow us to track this email.

1. Please send an email containing your city, state,
and country to [e-mail]. You do not need to include your name. Please only respond one time.

2. Forward this letter to as many people as you
possibly can. We are going to keep track of actual numbers of responses from individual cities, so
send it even to those that live in the same town.

We have decided to only do the tracking for 1 month. We have chosen the month of March so that we can get the data ready for the fair in April. If you receive this email in April, please do not bother to respond, our project will have already ended. Thank you for your participation in our
experiment.
We can't wait to start receiving those emails! We will post the results on the Tawas Area School web site www.tawas.net if you are interested in viewing them.'

whois seemed to check out, and tawas school is found by google.
posted by asok at 7:21 AM on March 12, 2002

Man are they going to regret this. Anybody want to take bets on when their mail servers explode?

Kids, heh.
posted by luser at 7:28 AM on March 12, 2002

Thank you very much for giving advance warning. I've already added a spam filter that searches for "Clara Bolen" in the body.
posted by Holden at 7:32 AM on March 12, 2002

What exactly is this supposed to teach them? It's a small world after all?
posted by McBain at 7:34 AM on March 12, 2002

It's Tawas City. Did they really write "Tawa"?
posted by rodii at 7:46 AM on March 12, 2002

Actually, it would be interesting to see the results of their study. Figuring out where people actually -use- the internet to communicate with one another, and the paths that the emails follow, is an interesting statistical problem.
I wonder what their margin of error will come to be?
posted by SpecialK at 7:50 AM on March 12, 2002

They had the good sense to use a free e-mail account (Hotmail). Unfortunately, this spam will be adapted and readapted and recirculated by other people for the next 50 years.
posted by fleener at 7:51 AM on March 12, 2002

"Right, children, that was such a success that I'd like you all to pick up the telephone for our next experiment. That's right, we're going to see how many long-distance phone calls to complete strangers we can make in a month, to prove that you really can telephone anyone in the whole world. And when we're done with that, we're going to climb aboard our big yellow school bus and drive all over North America, and then catch a ferry across the Bering Strait and drive all across Asia and Europe as well, to prove that they actually exist. And for our last experiment, we're all going to jump into the school swimming pool and see what happens when we pee in it."
posted by rory at 7:52 AM on March 12, 2002

rodii - the email text is as i received it, it is an elementary school. ; )
posted by asok at 8:10 AM on March 12, 2002

The hotmail acct will be LARTed and gone within a few days.
posted by benh57 at 8:19 AM on March 12, 2002

Teacher: And so what have we learned, children?

Class, in unison: That the road to hell is paved with small acts that are not thought throught to their logical conclusion, Mrs. Benson.
posted by Shadowkeeper at 9:16 AM on March 12, 2002

spent alot of time in Tawas, was just there on business. It is a small community. I mean, you should see the police station. Its kinda like the floating 20$ story. I think it worthy of doing.
posted by clavdivs at 9:29 AM on March 12, 2002

Forward this letter to as many people as you
possibly can

Maybe these kids should learn about geometric series first. Hmmm. If one person forwards it to 10 people and each does the same then, after only 7 forwards (assuming no repeats which I know is unlikely) they have reached 10 million people!!
posted by vacapinta at 10:20 AM on March 12, 2002

Well, tawas.net has been /.'d. Doing a google search shows that there is a teacher named Lentz at that school.
She teaches computers and music.

I'm betting money that someone did this as a mean joke on Ms. Lentz. Nobody with any knowledge of the internet could think this was a good idea. However, as a way to target someone...this is pretty brilliant...it takes down the school's network from bandwidth overload, it generates huge bad publicity for the school and Ms. Lentz, and it could possibly put her job in peril.

I think it was a hatchet job. Of course, I've been wrong before...it could just be stupidity.
posted by dejah420 at 12:45 PM on March 12, 2002

Unless someone hacked the tawas website, it's real enough:

YES - Mrs. Lentz's elementary class IS conducting an e-mail project.
Mrs. Lentz is encountering overwhelming response, and is doing her best to keep up with the project. If you receive an email returned as "undeliverable" it is NOT a bad address. The correct address is:
[e-mail] With over 3,000 emails per day so far, tracking the addresses is taking longer than anticipated, and the mailbox is overflowing! Sorry for any inconvenience. We received responses from over 40 countries in 4 days. This has truly proven that even though many miles separate us, we ARE all connected in some remote way!

I think what it proves is that spam is always lame, no matter the origin. But that's just me.
posted by kittyb at 1:13 PM on March 12, 2002

This has been done before, and, yeah, it crashed the server, and really annoyed the isp. It would have been smart to put in a date with the year, after which the email should no longer be forwarded.

If you've used email for a long time, it's no big deal. But to elementary school kids, it may be pretty cool to realize how few hops it takes to reach around the globe. Jeez, do we always have to be jaded?
posted by theora55 at 2:38 PM on March 12, 2002

Must.. resist.. reporting.. to.. Spamcop..
posted by krisjohn at 3:34 PM on March 12, 2002

If you've used email for a long time, it's no big deal. But to elementary school kids, it may be pretty cool to realize how few hops it takes to reach around the globe. Jeez, do we always have to be jaded?

No, but there are ways to demonstrate the net's reach, and there are ways not to demonstrate it... When I was a kid I had a penpal, which was an interesting way of learning about life in another country. One penpal. I wasn't encouraged by my teacher to send out chain letters asking anyone and everyone in the world to write to me and to forward the chain letter to as many other people as possible. Big difference. Why couldn't the teacher just show the class a few webpages from Hong Kong or Kenya instead?
posted by rory at 1:44 AM on March 13, 2002