Fri 3 Feb 2012
Please Don’t Confuse the Computer
Posted by anaglyph under Hmmm..., Idiots, Spam Observations, Weird Messages, Words
[23] Comments
Some tips for phishermen:
1. A spell-check is probabbly a good idea.
2. When speaking language other than your own, learn how plural work.
3. Proper (companies)hire professionals to make surethat type spacing is correct.
4. Try not to invent wordis that don’t exist in your target language. Also, to use correct grammar.
5. Sense it might good idea be to appear to make.
6. avoid Arbitrary capiTalization.
7. Humour is generally best avoided. Oh, sorry, I see – that wasn’t intentional.
8. A number pulled out of your ass is meaningless and impresses nobody (ref:198550)
I got a letter from the Nigerian Lottery or somesuch, telling me that I had one millions. It wasn’t done very well, but was good enough that I had to pay it some undivided attention before dismissing it as a scam, due to the same quality issues in the Paypal scam.
I very nearly replied though. I thought about pointing out some of the more obvious mistakes and offering to help them make a more convincing letter for a fee. I thought it would be fun trying to get some money out of them.
I didn’t do it, in the end. There are enough people who fall for this anyway, without the scammers producing perfect copy.
But there are people who make a hobby of baiting the scammers, and can be hilarious sometimes:
http://www.419eater.com/index.php
These 419 Eaters reply to phishing emails and persuade them to do all sorts of things, from carving Wallace and Grommit figures out of wood to copying street maps by hand to waste their time, while dangling a reward in front of them.
Somewhere on the site is a page where the ’419 Eater’ posed as a journalist and interviewed the Nigerian scammers about their life and why they scam, how much they make etc. It did put it all a bit more in perspective, though does nothing to persuade me to condone their actions. It is interesting to read though.
Sorry, “telling me I had WON millions”.
See how easy it is to get it wrong?
Yes, I’m familiar with 419eater.com.
I’m totally not surprised that people fall for these things – most of them can’t spell in the first place. Also, a lot of people who are not very tech-savvy must get caught. You’d think that by now, though, anyone who has an email address knows that if someone offers you a large amount of money, it possibly isn’t on the level :)
I’m not surprised either – to be honest I don’t hold a very high opinion of the majority of humans, for some of them their most impressive achievement is walking upright on their hind legs. They are in such unbelievable contrast with those super-brains in society, the Brian Cox’s and Stephen Hawkings, people who are just so amazingly intelligent, they are certainly far above my level!
So what is it that makes the difference between the slack-jawed deadbeat and the particle physicist? I really feel that a lot of peple don’t even try to think. They may not have been encouraged to think as children, I suppose, but that never strikes me as a decent excuse… must you really be encouraged to think?
If there is one thing I detest (and I promise there is more than one, curmudgeon that I am) it’s a lazy thinker.
A major problem with human evolution is that you don’t need to be very smart to breed.
Speaking of scamming the scammers, there was a great one a while back wherein a guy replied to a supposedly Nigerian one about computers, in which he sent them loads of rubbish labeled as Anus computers (I suppose it was a play on Asus or somesuch) and got them to pay air freight and everything on it, and they even managed to get some pics of the perps in London or something. Looks like all the links I can find now are dead, though.
Even apparently intelligent and savvy people like highly successful lawyers fall for these things.
There’s even a special subset of Nigerian scams targeted to lawyers.
>—–Original Message—–
From: Paul Tak Wah Yau [mailto:paulyauetl@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, April 01, 2009 3:06 AM
To: undisclosed-recipients
Subject: Request for Legal assistance
Electronics Tomorrow Ltd
Unit 905-7, 9/F., Tower 1,
Harbour Centre, 1 Hok Cheung Street,
Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong.
Tel:(852) 2330 1550
Fax:(852) 2330 3273
Web: http://www.etl.com.hk
Attention Counsel
Request for Legal assistance.
This is an official request for legal representation on behalf of Electronics Tomorrow Ltd . Our Company’s principal activity is to sell and develop electronic components and other peripheral equipment. The Electronic parts division deals in semiconductors and EMS for personal computers, and general electronic parts. The Information equipment division sells personal computers and computer peripheral equipment.
We are presently incapacitated due to international legal boundaries to exert pressure on our delinquent customers and we request for your services accordingly. We got your contact information from the Online Lawyers Directory as a result of our search for a reliable firm or individual to provide legal services as requested.
After a careful review of your profile as well as your qualification and experience, we are of the opinion that you are capable and qualified to provide the legal services as requested.
On behalf of Electronics Tomorrow Ltd. Please accept my sincerest appreciation in advance for your willingness to render your services as we look forward to your prompt response to our request.
Yours truly,
Mr Paul Tak Wah Yau
CEO
—————-
Because major electronics companies with their own web sites often use gmail for corporate email, right?
Yeah, I’m in kind of two minds about these kinds of scams and their victims. I find it a lot harder to be sympathetic to people who are acting out of greed, rather than a desire to cure their rheumatism, say.
This post from a while back sums it up, I guess.
We are all taught, as youngsters, that strangers with candy should always be regarded with suspicion. It seems that some people just never learn this lesson.
Brian Cox’s what?
You don’t want to know.
This just depresses the shit outta me. Not because phishers and their target audience are thick as bricks, but because I *never* get spam like this. What’s wrong with moi?
just sign up for aa few dogy looking websites, give them your email address (or better yet give them a temporary hotmail address) and within days your private details will have been provided to everyone from the Nigerian Bank manager strugging to export his money, to the Russian girl who can’t seem to find a decent husband amongst her countrymen.
Don’t be too disillusioned Duk old chap. I get a friggin’ truckload of spam and most of it gets sucked away by SpamSieve and I never see it. Very occasionally I pick one up that’s amusing. The great bulk of it is boring bland mush.
I am Confuseds. Who keeps nUmbers in their ass these days?
They gotta come from somewhere…
Also rev, not sure if intentional, but you put a ‘wordis’ on point 4 of your help to the phishermen….
Um… was that the only mistake you found? :)
Well, the only one that looked potentially accidental. I mean, the ‘i’ has a floating dot that one could easily mistake for an apostrophe….
If you equate my suggestions to the numbers on the originals you will see my clever jape.
I had trouble accessing the Numbers in my aRse, until I purchased ArSo-NumbaGet. I got an email about it. (5278-59B)
Congratulations! You also get $1 million dollars! Please send acquisition fee immediately!
What strikes me about that line you’ve labeled ’7′ is that it appears to have wandered in from some other e-mail. I mean, what are the odds whoever produced this specimen could actually have written two consecutive sentences of error-free, idiomatic English?
Yes, I thought the same. It’s like they suddenly went fluent and got a sense of humour at the same time. No doubt there is a bit of cut & paste with this kind of thing, but why the heck didn’t they cut & paste ‘Dear Customer’?
Still, I guess they are aiming at a particularly stupid class of human beings, so maybe none of this really matters.