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Here are some of the most common versions of a long-running Internet hoax that has been circulating online in one form or another since 1997. The names of the companies involved and the supposed rewards to be had periodically change, but the basic come-on remains the same: fool gullible netizens into endlessly forwarding junk messages to their friends and acquaintances with phony promises of cash and free merchandise: Nothing about this form of hoax is real: Bill Gates isn't giving $5,000 to Facebook users who click a share link, the plan wasn't written up in USA Today (other than in articles about Internet hoaxes), Microsoft isn't running a tracked e-mail beta test with Bill Gates paying people for participating, and Intel and AOL aren't merging. Microsoft put up a message on their web site warning the public about this hoax back in 1999: The photograph shown above is an altered version of a picture of Bill Gates taken prior to a February 2013 AMA (Ask Me Anything) session on reddit. The bottom line is that no matter which incarnation of this silliness one receives, the principle is the same: there's still no free lunch, and big companies aren't going to hand out fabulous vacations, thousands of dollars, free trendy clothes, new computers, cases of candies, wads of cash, or new cars just because someone with a functioning Internet connection does them the favor of forwarding an e-mail. Though at first blush, participating in such pie-in-the-sky wishfulness appears perfectly harmless, such participation only serves to clog up already overtaxed resources. Oh yes, it does one other thing: it gives the pranksters who cooked up these frauds a great big laugh at others' expense.
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