Saturday, September 24, 2011

Nigerian Scam emails

Don't you love them? I actually collect them at one of my email addresses, with the intention of publishing them on a special blog, eventually, so everyone can have a laugh. You know - the ones that tell you that there's millions of dollars stashed away in a bank account because the owner was killed in a plane crash (although I've been enjoying a couple from daughters of former dictators/kings/whatever) and they are desperate to get it out of the country and can they have your details and they will let you in on it for anything from 30% to 50% of the takings? And the spelling of this supposed bank director is always atrocious, of course. I've never been able to work out how anyone could be taken in by this rubbish. I mean, they say you can't fool an honest person and certainly, anyone who thinks they're going to get lots of free cash for perpetrating a scam overseas is not very honest, but also, why would they think that this email has been sent to them personally by a total stranger instead of to millions of people? Phishing is worse. It's easy to be fooled into thinking your bank is asking you for information unless, a. you know that banks just don't do that by email or, b. you get an official-looking email from the ANZ bank when you don't actually HAVE an account with the ANZ. And then there are the supposed emails from, say Yahoo, threatening to cut off your account if you don't reply within 24 hours. I always say, "Go ahead, make my day", but I bet there are plenty who don't. If it's from Yahoo or Hotmail and my account is Yahoo or Hotmail, why is it in the spam folder anyway? But again, it's easy to be fooled here. No, I just love the Nigerian scam ones, they're my all-time favourite and I only just got my first one in Gmail, right under the fake Rolex ads, the penis enlargers and the ones about Russian women who are desperate to make your acquaintance. I need the laugh.