Daily Dose of Common Sense

Spam is the bane of every email account. Emails you don’t want from people you don’t know, usually trying to sell you something you don’t need. Many aren’t even in your native language. According to one company in California, spam volumes have increased four-fold in the last six months. Guess it’s one of the few areas that’s booming in this recession.

Here’s an email that slipped past my spam filter and recently landed in my in-box. Both annoying and nebulous, I had to laugh over this one. Does this really work on anyone? (I sure hope not.)

Hello,

I am Mr. XX, supervisor on investment in Standard Chartered Bank, Hong Kong.; I have a sensitive, confidential brief from Hong Kong and I am asking for your partnership in re-profiling funds ($18,500,000.00 USD).

Hmmm….sounds like a lot of money. What, exactly, does “re-profiling” funds entail? Is that similar to what they do to criminals on CSI? If I can get a lab coat and microscope out of the deal, I’m in!

What I require from you is your honest co-operation and I guarantee that this will be executed under a legitimate arrangement that will protect you and I from any breach of the law. Please accept my apologies, keep my confidence and disregard this email if you do not appreciate this proposition I have offered you.

Very polite. Yet, not informative. I still don’t have any idea what is going on. Why do we need protection from the law? This all seems very clandestine.

All confirmable documents to back up this fund shall be made available to you, as soon as I receive your reply, I shall let you know what is required of you.

Will this message self-destruct in thirty seconds?

I can tell the spammers what they DO need, and that is an editor. (I’m available if they want someone to fix punctuation, grammar, and spelling mistakes.)

Don’t ever reply to spam. This ploy is obviously a scam, and these are awful people looking to do you harm. If you’re overly curious and want to see what kind of nuts run these scams, check out Dean Cameron’s Spam Scam Scam. Cameron responded to one of the Nigerian spam emails and began a correspondence with the spammers. The results became a live show, and it’s hilarious.

Photo courtesy of Flickr: borman818

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 27th, 2009 at 3:47 pm and is filed under Scams. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.