Monday, November 5, 2012

What a scam!

I've received a lot of spam emails lately. The funniest one involved a man claiming to be a rich businessman from Europe. The email started quite sweetly. He said he was old and had no family, so he'd decided to give his entire life's saving as an inheritance to a person at a random email address--mine. 
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I could get the money if I simply sent him $200 for taxes . . . or something.  

    What's the worst scam/spam email you've ever heard of?

10 comments:

  1. Ah, the classic Nigerian 419 scam with a slightly new twist. Back when I was reaching I had a student approach me. He had gotten one of these scams via email and wanted to know 1) if it was legit and 2) if I wanted in on it.

    Though flattered he wanted to share his newfound "fortune" with me, I still had to smack him upside the head as I had mentioned this particular scam to the class just the week before.

    As I tell my family (far more often than I should) Snopes.com is your friend.

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  2. Reaching = teaching. Damn autocorrect. :)

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  3. Recently I have been getting e-mails from "Amazon" saying that my order for a very expensive item (usually a large flat screen tv) has shipped to my name at an address in some other state. For a second, it makes you worry that someone hacked into your account and purchased something in it, and had it sent to their address, so you are tempted to click on the link provided in the email to see what happened in your account, but it is a spam link!

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  4. There is a scam going around at the moment where hackers lock up your computer and flash a message pretending to be from Strathclyde Police saying they have detected your computer accessing illegal porn sites and asking for your bank account details so they can fine you £150 to unlock your PC.
    It's not happened to me yet but I've come across it at work.

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    1. Here it's from the FBI, and it's $200 that they want to unlock your computer. Funniest thing, they didn't want bank details, they gave us a list of stores, K-Mart, Target, etc. where we could buy a money card. The FBI is nice like that.

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  5. Lol I get these all the time! Or sometimes they pretend to be a lottery from some big international corporation! There are a ton of them. In Nigeria, they actually teach a course about how to scam Americans and Canadians by email!

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  6. Sorry I don't have time to leave a comment today because I have to hurry & send money & info to the WalMart heiress so she can leave me lots of money in her will...I wish that money they're sending me from Nigeria would hurry up & get here!!

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  7. King Abubu sends me emails all the time. Sadly I have to decline his offers of making me rich, the cat doesn't like monoply money haha seen them all, paypal ones, bank ones, even dating site ones, those are some of the worst.

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  8. When the Nigerian scam was brand new, quite a few years ago, a guy I know was taken for thousands. I don't know exactly how much, but it was bad; and he wasn't the only one. He's a very intelligent person, but the thought of "free" money draws in some people.

    Love,
    Janie

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  9. The worst scam I've been propositioned with? "I love you, you're everything to me baby. NOW will you sleep with me?".

    Um. No.

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