Though chain mail accounts for a very minute proportion of spam, it is perhaps more annoying than spam and displays people as larger idiots than spam does; whereas spam often is an attempt to get bank details for Nigerians to 'transfer' $6.3 million for safe-keeping, drawing in idiots interested solely in vast quantities of money, chain mail makes promise of far different things; for example, the computer being able to flash up the name of your crush when the e-mail is sent off to twenty more idiots, or the love of your life kissing you at 11 o'clock on the dot on Friday night.

What annoys me more than receiving chain mail from people I've not spoken to in years on my MSN contact list, is that when I used to ask people why they sent it off, as the promise of finding true love only by sending it to thirty people was clearly unfounded, was that they would respond that it was a bit of fun.

I, personally, do not find sending off trashy, drivel-filled e-mails to randoms fun at all. Rather, I believe these idiotic hopefuls are deluded by these unrealistic, impossible promises, but with just the vaguest hint of underlying sanity that quells them to protect themselves by lying about their real intentions; in this case, sending a pointless e-mail that will make me delete it before reading, in a desperate bid for finding adoration.

The most common chain mail is the surely infamous, by now, poorly-spelt, dodgy grammar-laden e-mail allegedly sent by the head of MSN, telling that MSN would soon cost money as there were only roughly 470 'names' left available. The e-mail even cited a source, though the link has been so outdated for the last year or more that it redirects straight to the BBC website.

When I last received the e-mail, I think at some point this year, I decided to root around for the article purportedly claiming that it would soon alter MSN Messenger to be a paid-for service. What I found was actually an article referring to MSN's internet service and features of it's website - not the Messenger service, as claimed.

And yet, despite this, I have seen this message, practically always the same, always claiming only to be 470 or so 'names' left, ever since I started using Hotmail and MSN, over five years ago. This, along with the poor spelling and bad grammar of the e-mail, and the intrinsically moronic way of having to avoid any charges associated with a monthly MSN Messenger fee should notify anyone reading it that it's not true.

And considering a combination of letters, numbers and either hyphens or underscores, and the fact that e-mail addresses can likely have up to fifty characters before the @, we find ourselves with thirty-eight possible characters. Thus, fifty positions, each with thirty-eight character possibilities, offers a great deal of combinations for e-mail names; likely in the billions.

I know MSN is popular, but it's not that popular.