Ok – I will confess. Sometimes, only sometimes, I read spam. Not always and not all of it but enough. My reason for reading it is that I often find it fascinating. My favorite spam is not the helpful tips for member enlargement or the false degrees (even though the latter is kind of amusing considering how much time I have spent at university), no my favorite is the Nigerian 419*
Today I was reading one of these and was amused that people fall for these things. Naturally people do. I had a boss many, many years ago when I worked in a pet store who used to say:
Remember, people are not as stupid as you think – they are much stupider!
Words of wisdom from the bottom of the fish tank. Anyway badly written online scams amaze me. They make me think of the poor stupid saps who fall for them. Today for example I received an email from a Mr Harry Thomas, the Director of Operations for Barclays Bank in London. He naturally wanted me to email him all sorts of information about my account:
Do update me back in Details so that we can proceed further how to Transfer your funds Directly to your Bank Account, and you will have to come Down to our Bank so that you can make some Signing so that your funds will be wired to you.
Your Reply is Needed.
Beyond the bad grammar and the fake email address (who would fall for: barclaysbankmails@i.ua) – the thing that really gave it all away was the way in which he ended the letter
God Bless you.
No Way! A bank was all of a sudden concerned about my spiritual well-being 🙂
Obviously I should not read spam. But I do feel a desire to correct there most glowing errors. I don’t know why – its just that a pathetic attempt to do anything kind of cries out for help.
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*Online scammers pretending to be deposed presidents or corrupt oil company employees often contact people in an attempt to establish contact for a future scam. The reason this is called a Nigerian 419 is that many of these scammers were traditionally based in Nigeria and 419 is the fraud section of the criminal code.