Please share this story about digital etiquette with as many people as you can. If you send it to five people you'll have good luck for a month; to 10 people, you'll have good luck for a year; to 20 people, you'll be lucky all your life; otherwise...

Just kidding.

A young girl shouts into her mobile phone at a public event in Hefei, Anhui Province. [China Daily]

According to a study by British company Synovate, 64 per cent of Chinese Internet users detest the phrase "please share this with as many people as you can" the words which signal the arrival of a chain e-mail.

Synovate polled 3,363 netizens from the Chinese mainland, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR), South Korea, Malaysia and Thailand on their attitudes towards digital manners. And chain e-mails topped the cyberspace rudeness list for Asians, with 40 per cent saying they were the Internet's biggest annoyance.

Tempers were most frayed on the Chinese mainland, where 64 per cent of respondents said chain e-mails were a bother.

"I rarely forward chain e-mails," said Zhu Jun, a white-collar worker in Guangzhou. "I don't think they will bring me either good or bad luck."

Other respondents said they abhorred chain e-mails because the threats of bad luck they often contain.

Darryl Andrew, Synovate's managing director in China, believes part of the "netiquette" problem may be that people are often bolder and pay less attention to detail when it comes to working in cyberspace.

"Chain mails are a recognized burden to everyone with an e-mail account, but it also appears that CCs are fast becoming the most annoying letter combination in the business world," he said.

According to the company's survey, copying irrelevant people into messages was second only to chain e-mails on the list of cyberspace impropriety.

Other gripes include poor grammar, using a hand-held personal digital assistant (PDA) while eating out and bad spelling.

"With e-mail an indispensable form of communication for business and personal purposes, people need to compose their e-mails carefully, think before unnecessarily copying in colleagues and also make sure they turn their spelling and grammar checks on," Andrew said.

Chain e-mails are often scams of some sort although not necessarily financial. They are also often just be someone's idea of a joke.

The fundamental principle of chain e-mails is that the recipient is valued not for their thoughtfulness, resourcefulness, careful consideration of issues, willingness to enter into a dialog, or even conversational abilities, but rather, primarily for their willingness to react.

The Synovate survey also examined Asian consumers' attitudes to mobile phones and SMS (short message service).

Sixty per cent of respondents said they would be unable to function without their mobile phones, with consumers in Hong Kong (76 per cent), Malaysia (71 per cent) and Thailand (69 per cent) the most mobile-reliant. On the Chinese mainland, the figure was 65 per cent.

Also, 45 per cent said people are now less courteous when using a mobile phone than they were five years ago.

On the Chinese mainland, loud mobile phone conversation in public places was regarded as the worst habit of all, with votes from more than half of respondents.

Su Dapeng, a teacher at Beijing Foreign Studies University, called loud mobile conversations "a breach of public morals and disrespectful of other people."

Duan Nijun, who works in the Beijing office of Ogilvy & Mather, an international public relations firm, recalled one particularly bad experience. While she was at the cinema trying to watch China's latest blockbuster "The Banquet," the mobile phone of a woman sitting beside her rang four times.

"Although she answered the phone in a lower voice than normal, it still prevented me from focusing on the movie," said Duan. "The annoying mobile contributed to my negative opinion of the movie."

Her feeling was echoed by Zhu Yun from Guangzhou, who believes all movie-goers are entitled to be quiet at the cinema, as they "pay quite a lot for the tickets."

"Loud mobile conversations at the cinema are not only impolite but show a lack of education," he said.

Andrew said that the inconsiderate use of mobile phones was a problem in many countries in South Korea, and some other countries, telecoms providers now run public service ads about it.

Politeness reminders are important also because mobile phones have become more than just a communication tool.

As the survey shows, mobile phone use also affects Asian people's love lives, with a remarkable 10 per cent of respondents saying they have had a relationship or friendship that ended by SMS. Nearly one-third of Malaysian respondents said they had had their hearts broken by SMS. South Korea was second, followed by China and Thailand.

Two-thirds of Asian consumers even had a suggestion to improve bad manners, Andrew said that digital devices should come with user etiquette manuals.

"Not only could such education be a platform for savvy marketers to differentiate themselves from the competition in a positive and constructive manner, but it may also bring welcome relief from the day-to-day disturbance that modern devices can create," said Andrew.

However, despite the gripes, most respondents conceded they were only occasionally affected by the inconsiderate use of technology.

"People have become desensitized to technology," said Andrew, "and are often not even aware when their own wireless behaviour starts affecting others around them."

Lu-Chin Mischke, founder of the Pride Institute, a non-profit organization, said: "People should realize that there is actually not much difference between digital etiquette and conventional courtesy."

Pride Institute aims to raise the standard of Chinese etiquette before the 2008 Olympic Games.

Every new technological advancement, including the Internet and mobile phones, aims to facilitate faster and easier communication among people, she said.

"People are inclined to ignore manners when they use these tools because they regard the tools as just a convenience," said Lu-Chin.

Besides the improprieties mentioned in the survey, Lu-Chin said she was also alarmed by the inappropriate use of SMS.

"A lot of people send short messages without addressing the recipient or identifying themselves," she said.

"You cannot always assume that the recipient knows who you are."

And it also implies to the recipient that he or she has no obligation to respond, she said.

The same problem applies to e-mails, she added.

Whether the technology involved is e-mail or SMS, Lu-Chin suggested people put themselves in others' shoes to avoid gaffes.

"As the old saying goes," she said, "one can never be too polite."