Freebie Mania.

ERICSSON SAYS IT'S ALWAYS LOOKING FOR INNOVATIVE marketing ideas, but e-mail chain letters are not one of them. The Swedish telecommunications giant is the subject of an Internet hoax offering free mobile phones to anyone who forwards a particular e-mail message to eight friends. The bogus offer (detailed on the Web site urbanlegends.about.com) stems from an earlier e-prank that claimed competitor Nokia was doling out free mobile phones. The Ericsson offer was purportedly in response. "My guess is that we've received slightly more than a thousand questions [about the phone offer]," says Ericsson spokeswoman Helena Norrman. Nokia ignored the spam but Ericsson confronted it head-on, even posting an alert on its Web site. The free phone is one in a growing number of false giveaways that have promised e-mail letter senders everything from a Honda vehicle to cash from America Online. Ericsson's Web site tips consumers on how they can recognize phony promos: despite what the schemes promise, there is no way yet to trace e-mail letters sent from user to user and, thus, no way to keep track of who should be rewarded. "So far we have not received so many inquiries from Latin America," Norrman notes.