The story of a very odd email (hard times traveling scam)

General Discussion
21

If not, print it out, write his phone number on it… and ask a neighbour/friend to make contact…

22

Those who enjoy “Just a Minute”, the BBC’s wrinkly parlour game, would have seen me doubly disqualified after less than ten seconds by Nicholas Parsons for incontinent repetition of “times”, countless, recent and hard ! :thinking:

Must chastise my inner proof-reader. :scream:

1 Like
23

I half feel like responding with a lengthy tirade about previous poor customer service and how he has a cheek to ask for cash - but I can’t really be bothered :slight_smile:

2 Likes
24

http://419coalition.org/

I remember one scam baiter site back in the early 2000s was awesome. Although its not just email fraud. Sometimes you get call fraud as well.

25

Received this today… :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Hello,

I am Mr. Abdulahi Issa, from Burkina Faso in West African region. I
work with the Bank of Africa here Which i am the audit manager . Can
you safe Guard these amount( $18 Million USD) for me in your Country??
Further Details will be given to you if you show Interest.

Regards

Mr. Abdulahi Issa.

26

I trust you helped him.

1 Like
27

Well, isn’t it nice of Mr Issa, to be willing to trust you with so much money image

28

He must have loads of money as he’s asked me to look after some for him too.:joy::joy:

1 Like
29

I seem to have a large family in Eastern Africa that I wasn’t aware of. They seem to be very rich but also die quite often.

(I trust that if it must be very difficult being a genuine solicitor in Nigeria tracing dependents of relatives in UK to make payments to from a deceased relatives estate)

1 Like
30

One of the jobs today - which I have been putting off for a while - was to move the email system to a new server.

Part of this is to feed previously classified spam into the filter to train it . While this process will happen automatically and the filter is pretty good at classifying spam out of the box it does improve accuracy.

I’ve been allowing it to accumulate, knowing that I had this exercise to go through so I have just been through all 4050 items in the spam folder, checking that they were classified correctly. This covers messages since January - it’s not the whole story because if the filter thinks something is really spammy it rejects it outright before even accepting it for delivery, also I have some rules which mean that messages from the most egregious senders are rejected without even accepting the body of the email and the anti-virus scanning stops a few before the spam filter gets a look in.

Disappointingly almost, I have no offers from Nigerian princes or African government officials to help them sumuggle large volumes of cash (for a slice of the action, naturally).

I do have lots of attractive Russian and Ukrainian girls who want to do things with me that would end in divorce. At least they say that they are attractive, but I need to click a link in the message to see, which ain’t gonna happen - for all I know they could all look like Giant Haystacks (that dates me :slight_smile: ).

There is a lot of medical quakery - miracle cures for various common ailments, cheap Viagra and the like.

For some reason - perhaps someone bought data which identified searches when I was buying tools and materials for the house in Brittany - I get a lot of DIY and woodworking stuff.

There were a couple of “you have won 1st price in the Microsoft email lottery” type ones.

But the overwhelming impression is that 99.99% are identifiable as spam/scam emails based on the subject line and sender alone - I don’t actually need to look at the message itself.

I know that the take up rate is tiny but it still surprises me that it is anything above zero.

31

Those Russian and Ukrainian girls clearly have visual processing problems, they write to me because they are desperate to have a family, they have seen my photo and think I would make a good husband and father for their children.

Oh dear.

1 Like
32

I have been getting loads of spam for a couple of years. Around 30-40 per day including the aforementioned Ukrainian and Russian ladies but suddenly 7 days ago it all stopped. Probably tempting fate now…

33

You must have finally agreed to marry a young Russian lady and she is on her way - that is why the emails have stopped!

Congratulations to you and Olga!

34

Maybe your email supplier has finally worked out how to do filtering?

Actually, I’ve seen a considerable reduction in spam since last week as well.

35

She tells me Putin is much misunderstood…

1 Like
36

It’s a yahoo account. No idea why they’ve suddenly stopped but I’d be surprised if it’s yahoo being proactive.

37

There have been dips previously - usually some major spammer-friendly ISP or cloud provider gets taken out by the authorities and the volume drops for a while.

38

It’s the look of stern but kindly authority, and the ebony-and-ivory pipe clenched in your mouth at a jaunty angle (viz your thumbnail mugshot) Véronique… :yum: