It never seems to end. I speak of course of the endless line of spammers and scammers infesting our inboxes with spam, scam emails. The same sort who try to pass off spam comments in posts in our blogs. They will never take a hint and take a long walk off a short pier, to use an old expression. More's the pity. Because they'll never stop trying.
The following came through to my email some weeks ago.
We ve heard that a financial and medical support can go a long way during the pandemic.I'm Sheryll Goedert from Florida,the winner of a $396.9 million Powerball jackpot held on January 29,2020This Winning is a blessing so we decided to give back to the societywhich means we are officially notifying you that you have beenselected as one of the Beneficiaries of 2022 VACATION LIFE LLC SocialResponsibility Cash Aid Program.Your e-mail address was randomly chosen by the Topaz Ballot System.You have been awarded the sum of $1,000,000.00 for charity and medical support.Should you wish to verify, below are links to that effect.
So where to begin. Well, for starters, with the fact that the sending email has the country code es, which is for Estonia. That's a long way from Florida. That should be the first great big warning flag that this is a scam. Because that email is the first in a long chain of emails leading to some slimebag, perhaps in Russia, perhaps in Thailand, perhaps in Nigeria. Wherever they are, they're still a slimebag.
We see some of those usual tell-tales of scammers. Capitalized words where the word doesn't need capitalization. Overly formal writing, but in a way that suggests the author doesn't really understand the English language. Punctuation issues with run on sentences.
It turns out there is a Sheryll Goedert who won a lottery, but this is definitely not her. Because a look online says she's spoken out about the scam, which is all over the place, using her name for this fake scam that has surely suckered a few people in- otherwise why would it have lasted this long?
But we've seen this before, with scammers appropriating the name of real people, some of whom might have died tragically, to spin their tale. It's hardly surprising- and it's likely I may end up getting this email again.
Nice try, numbskull. But I'm wise to your ways. Why don't you do the world a favour...
....and jump into one of these?
If I win the lottery my name will be anonymous, no one will know except for my family when I hand out their shares.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't tell anyone.
DeleteI think if I won the lottery I would get a lot of happiness from remaining anonymous so I could make gifts to people without them knowing it was me, it would be fun to see them speculating about how it could be that £10,000 dropped through their letterbox for example! I imagine being rich must take away a lot of your freedom :)
ReplyDeleteI would keep working a year or two. But that's it.
DeleteSomeday, you'll delete one of these emails and miss out on the million dollars from the lottery winner using an Estonian email address. Then you'll be sorry.
ReplyDeleteI'll take my chances.
DeleteOh, they'll just keep coming.
ReplyDeleteThey never stop.
DeleteIt's really spooky. My son-in-law keeps warning me not to click on THAT link.... ANY link that I'm not 100% sure of. I'm really tired of spammers on my blog and there seems to be no way to get Blogspot to block them even when I mark them as spam.
ReplyDeleteA good warning.
Delete