The U.S. Postal Service "Alternate Postage Fees" Email Warning Is A Hoax

Last non-trivial modification: 08 November, 2001

This information can be freely reproduced in any medium, as long as the information is unmodified.

This is another in a series of "If you don't do something now, the Government is going to make you pay to use your computer!" hoaxes. We first saw the U.S. Postal Service version of this hoax on 13 May, 1999; Thanks to Bernard Becker for, on 21 April, 1999 being the first to alert us about this hoax, in its original, Canadian version.

The original claimed to be Canadian legislation; a United States version soon followed, and is highly derivative. Of course, that's all the hoaxters are capable of, so no surprises there. Here are the main points of the U.S. Postal Service version; for the full text (ugh!), click here:

Postal Service to Charge for E-Mail

Read the following and pass it on to everyone you know:

Dear Internet Subscriber:

Please read the following carefully if you intend to
stay online and continue using email: The last few
months have revealed an alarming trend in the
Government of the United States attempting to quietly
push through legislation that will affect your use of
the Internet. Under proposed legislation the U.S.
Postal Service will be attempting to bilk email users
out of "alternate postage fees". Bill 602P will permit
the Federal Govt to charge a 5 cent surcharge on
every email delivered, by billing Internet Service
Providers at source. 

Compare this with the Canadian version -- they didn't even bother to change the supposed number of the bill:

[Original, Canadian version]

Under proposed legislation Canada Post will be attempting to bill email
users out of "alternate postage fees". Bill 602P will permit the Federal
Govt to charge a 5 cent surcharge on every email delivered, by billing
Internet Service Providers at source. The consumer would then be billed in
turn by the ISP. Toronto lawyer Richard Stepp QC is working to prevent
this legislation from becoming law.

<snip>

Kate Turner
Assistant to Richard Stepp, Berger, Stepp and Gorman
Attorneys at Law 216 Concorde Street, Vienna, Va.

Hmmm. Also a striking resemblance to the original:

Kate Turner
 Assistant to Richard Stepp QC
 Berger, Stepp and Gorman
 Barristers at Law
 216 Bay Street
 Toronto, ON
 MlL 3C6

If you'd like more information, see the U.S. Postal Service's debunking of this nonsense(leaving our site).

For the original "Canadian Email Surcharge Legislation" version of this hoax, on which the U.S. Postal Service verson is based, click here.

Please do not forward this -- or any other hoax -- to all your friends.

Instead, you should reply to the sender -- and as far back up the email chain as you have energy -- informing the originators that this is a hoax. For this particular hoax, I suggest that you provide a pointer to this URL (http://www.umich.edu/~virus-busters/hoaxes/usps602p.html)
For virus or hoax info, please see our main page (http://www.umich.edu/~virus-busters/) or go to another reputable site, like DataFellows (leaving our site).

   -BPB

visits to this page since 06 June, 1999 04:13 EDT