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You may have been looking for her if you are one of the hundreds of thousands of people who got the following e-mail, with the subject line "Please take heed at this picture then forward":

I am asking you all, begging you to gratify, forward this email on to anyone and everyone you know, PLEASE. My 9 year old girl, Penny Brown, is missing. She has been missing in the place of things being so two weeks. It is still not too late. Please help us. If anyone anywhere knows anything, sees anything, please contact me at zicozicozico@hotmail.com I am including a picture of her. All prayers are appreciated!! It only takes 2 seconds to help in succession this on, if it was your child, you would want all the help you could get. Please. Thank you for your fellow-feeling, hopefully you can help us.

Poor little Penny Brown. Not only is she missing, she doesn't even exist.

The fake e-mail has circulated for years, and in that place is no missing child by that name. Penny Brown may be America's best-known non-existent missing child. There are only a maniple of enslave e-mails that characteristic actual missing kids, and most of those children were recovered months or years ago.

Hoax e-mails seem to have been increasing in the last few months. Most e-mail hoaxes are warnings of some sort, either asking for the public's help to light upon a missing person, or cautioning them against more lurking nonexistent danger.

For archetype, last week in Grand Rapids, Michigan, an e-mail warned that women driving between Plainfield Avenue and 3 Mile Road had been approached by an armed man who enters his victims' vehicle. The women are then driven to a nearby park and raped. The e-mail ends by dint of. saying that the warning is not a imposition (of course), and that the assaults had been verified by the police. The limited police, meanwhile, said that they had received dozens of calls from concerned citizen, excepting that the e-mail was a fraud and no such unrighteousness has been reported.

Though the e-mail notices and warnings are sometimes recognized as hoaxes, the vulgar will frequently forward them to friends and house "merited to be on the safe indirect."

In late May, a hoax e-mail was taken so seriously that it actually all but shut down the nightlife in the Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez for a weekend.

An unacknowledged e-mail circulated a warning that gunmen were planning to drive around the incorporated town and target anyone in nightclubs, malls, restaurants, parks, and other general body of mankind places. The e-mail cautioned people to stay domicile. A small in number patrons ignored the deceive, but businesses were nearly empty all weekend. The prank not only alarmed citizens of this already-violent city, but also took an housekeeping toll. The owner of a Juarez auto parts store said his business fell by over half, and that residents feared for their lives.

These e-mails are created by pranksters and forwarded by well-meaning people who hold they are doing the just thing by warning others. Yet there are few if any real cases of actual crimes have been averted (or wanting persons found) through a chain e-mail.

Most hoaxed e-mails are actually pretty not stiff to spot. The "do one’s heart good forward" or "urgent!!!" subject lines are red flags, and if it's asking you to discover a missing kid or avoid a local beetle because of rapists who hide less than your car and slash your ankles, you can be virtually certain it's fake. More information on hoax confine e-mails can have existence found at the Urban Legends Reference Page (www.snopes.com) and Breakthechain.org.

As always, the best information about missing kids and neighborhood dangers comes from police and the local news, not one e-mail forwarded through your best friend's cousin's aunt's hairdresser's husband.

Benjamin Radford is a composer, filmmaker, and cover with boards game designer; his latest project can be found at PlayingGods.com .

Urban Legends Debunked Top 10 Unexplained Phenomena Top 10 Conspiracy Theories Original Story: RE: FWD: Beware Hoax E-Mails!!!

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