When it spreads through the system it jeopardizes access to these publicly funded resources for all of us. For this reason, and because we constantly receive complaints from users who consider chain mail and e-mail bombing to be an offensive intrusion, we make it a priority to keep it from proliferating.
Chain mail is defined as any message that meets two criteria.
The letter must serve a non-academic purpose. It must also explicitly ask you to send it to others. These two traits suffice to identify chain mail, regardless of content. This definition applies even if the message is sent to only one person. E-mail bombing is defined as a message that is repeatedly sent to one user multiple times.