Forwarding an email will earn you money from Bill Gates
| Forwarding an email will earn you money from Bill Gates | |
|---|---|
| FALSE | |
| "Microsoft and Bill Gates are testing an email tracking program and will pay people money, sometimes $1,000 or more, for every person they forward the message to." | |
| Domain | Technology & Media |
| Tactic | Fabrication Imposture |
| Era | Historical |
| First seen | 1997 |
| Origin | A chain email that began circulating in 1997 and spread widely through the early internet, with later versions on social media |
| Last reviewed | 2026-10-27 |
| Further reading: books on Technology & Media | |
The claim that forwarding an email will earn you money from Bill Gates is one of the earliest viral internet hoaxes. Versions of the message said that Microsoft was beta-testing email tracking software and would reward people for each forward, or that Bill Gates was sharing his fortune. Some versions claimed to be from Microsoft employees or lawyers and included testimonials from people who had supposedly received checks. No such program existed. Email cannot track forwards in the way described, and Microsoft never offered such payments.
What the evidence shows
- No program. Microsoft has stated that it has no such program. Fact-checkers have found no one who received a payment.
- Technical impossibility. Ordinary email has no mechanism for a company to track how many times a message is forwarded across different email providers.
- Variants. Similar hoaxes claimed that companies such as AOL, Disney or Nokia would reward forwarding. Later versions appeared on Facebook, claiming Bill Gates or other billionaires would give money to people who shared a post.
- Social engineering. Although the original message mostly spread harmlessly, similar chain messages have been used to gather email addresses for spam or to direct people to scams.
Why it persists
The message appealed to hope for easy money and used a famous name to seem plausible. Forwarding cost nothing, and people reasoned that it could not hurt. Many internet users in the late 1990s were new to email and unfamiliar with chain letters online.
Lessons for readers
- Offers of free money for sharing a message are almost always hoaxes.
- Famous names are often used to lend credibility to scams.
- Ask whether the technology described is even possible.
- Chain messages can be used to harvest personal information.
See also
- Posting a legal notice protects your Facebook content
- The Nigerian prince email
- Pig butchering crypto investment scams
Sources
- Snopes, "Bill Gates Email Tracking Program," fact check.
- Jan Harold Brunvand, Encyclopedia of Urban Legends (W.W. Norton, 2001).