Dear scammer,
I refer to your email below and would like to make a few comments.
.
A few facts about the person you are impersonating.
- He's one of the finest grammarians in the country. He would have said "quickly" and not used the adjective "fast" as an adverb.
- I know he isn't in London.
- He would have spelled "program" "programme", and would have been a bit more specific about it.
- He would never use "i" even if he were desperate, or possibly had a gun pointing at his head.
- Ditto with capitalisation of the first word of the sentence.
- He wouldn't have hyphenated "sort-out".
- He's an expert on Commonwealth history and, even with a gun at his head, would have died rather than to have referred to the Australian High Commission as "the Embassy".
- He knows the difference between commas and full stops.
- He's far more resourceful than sending a letter (with undisclosed multiple recipients) to me.
- If he hasn't changed his password by now, I'll eat my hat.
- I love the way "he" has "limited access to the internet".
The first time I had one of these letters was 15 years ago. I've had several since.
You are an evil little swine, but we both know that already. I just thought I'd get that in.
Love from Denis.
Je suis d'accord. This needed to be said, and, as ever, you do so eloquently.
ReplyDeleteThis is where the vicious side of my personality comes out. It's great therapy. :)
DeleteHi Denis
ReplyDeleteI've kept the best of these for a number of years, in a mail folder called 'why me', just for interest's sake. I always like to check the actual website reference behind any 'click here to correct your info' text to see where it might send me.
One I particularly like is a .cz site, a specific file called 'corribible.htm' I thought that was a nice touch - in the old fashioned sense.
The other thing that irks is the 'tragic letter, please send on to as many people as you can' sort, which I've received many times from otherwise quite innocent people who have followed the instructions to the letter about sending it to all their address book - but do it without BCC - so my address then gets added into the other 500 contacts, and no doubt further scattered to the winds.
And I hope your day goes well, apart from this.
kvd
The temptation for me is still strong to click on it and play with them, but I fear any clicking on the site might infect my computer. In any case, they're usually shut down in minutes, or hours. It must be a hard way to make a living... but sometimes they do hit paydirt and some greedy/naive person finds their account drained.
DeleteI saw an amusing news story a while back about a man who devotes his free time to replying positively to these things, in order to waste the scammers' time and generally annoy them, which, judging by some of their ultimate responses, he was doing very effectively
ReplyDeleteMany years ago, I read an entire correspondence between a scammer and a guy, including photographs, in which the phishee was so persuasive, pretending to be both cautious and naive, that he extracted a small amount of 'good faith' money from the phisher before putting an end to the nonsense, with his 'winnings' sent via Western Union.
DeleteIt took a good 15 minutes out of my life to read, but it was worth it. That correspondence is still on a 3.5" floppy disk somewhere but I have nothing now to play it on, even if I could be bothered to find it again. Don't worry. I can't be.
PS He wouldnof called it a cellphone neither.
DeleteOh dear! I just re-read 'corribible.htm'. That should have been 'corrigible.htm' - which might make a little more sense of my comment. Sorry.
ReplyDeletekvd
Neither would he have used the redundancy 'refund ... back ...'
ReplyDeleteHeh heh. Point absolutely, completely and definitely taken.
DeleteThey pretend not to know English very well and deliberately make the most obvious mistakes. But as for ye olde programme, I'm afraid it's boldly gone to God with the split infinitive.
ReplyDeleteYes. I think I've seen them all. They work on the scattergun principle - there'll always be a few who are open to suggestion and, as been shown many times, it's not always the dumb guys; it's those who are half-smart and think they know what they're doing. Not too many women get caught with these scams. Angels fear to tread....
DeleteWell, perhaps I am stupid enough to fall for one. I meant to say "boldy gone to God with the unsplit infinitive". I'm surprised you didn't catch me out on that, Denis.
DeleteYes, we had a friend who fell for the Nigerian scam. And her 70 year old ex-boyfriend restored her crippled finances for her. Two scams in one.
Nigerians speak and write the Queen's English better than I do, so you know they're trying to feign ingenuousness with their endearing grammatical blunders.