The Curse Of The Unwanted Spam

 

It never ends, does it? The inevitable onslaught of spam and scam email, the nonsense comments of a nobody across the world desperately trying to lure you to their page focusing on Thai sports betting, for instance. Not interested, get lost, and go to hell. No matter how many times we ridicule them, they never take the hint. Because instead of just doing the world a favour and throwing themselves off a bridge, they keep doing this.

A few days ago I received this email, with the header Partnership Inquiry. Read for yourself. Try not to get a headache doing so.

Hello,

Can I still reach you at this email address?

Regards,
Any person receiving this email and any attachment(s) contained, shall treat the information as confidential and not misuse, copy, disclose, distribute or retain the information in any way that amounts to a breach of confidentiality. If you are not the intended recipient, please delete all copies of this email from your computer system. As the integrity of this message cannot be guaranteed, neither PT Bank BRI shall be responsible for the contents. Any opinion in this email may not necessarily represent the opinion of PT Bank BRI.

Any person receiving this email and any attachment(s) contained, shall treat the information as confidential and not misuse, copy, disclose, distribute or retain the information in any way that amounts to a breach of confidentiality. If you are not the intended recipient, please delete all copies of this email from your computer system. As the integrity of this message cannot be guaranteed, neither PT Bank BRI shall be responsible for the contents. Any opinion in this email may not necessarily represent the opinion of PT Bank BRI.

Well, let's see. They did reach me at my email address. Along with the half a million other random email accounts they sent it to. The important part is not clicking on anything, and definitely not replying. As tempting as it might be. No, I'll just reply by taking them apart here, as I always do.

Well, they write in that overly formal way, trying to present themselves as business-like, but someone from an actual bank would probably not make the cardinal mistake of writing the same paragraph twice.

Assuming they're not day-drinking.

While we don't see a lot of the curious wording and misspelling that is so common of spammers and scammers, it's still a scam. Sent at random to a half million email accounts or more. Proposing a partnership venture in the header but not saying anything of real substance in the body of the email. A random email out of the middle of nowhere.

A check confirms that there's an actual PT Bank BRI out there. 

In Indonesia.

Halfway around the bloody planet.

Rest assured, I have no interest in doing business in Indonesia, and doubt I'll ever visit the place.

I'm not a businessman, for one thing.

And this isn't a legitimate business venture.

Because real bankers don't send out random emails to people they've never met or corresponded with before.

Nice try, dumbass. But I'm wise to your ways and can see a scammer coming from kilometres away.

Perhaps someone else on that list of hundreds of thousands of emails will be gullible enough to bite and wind up losing a few thousand dollars before they realize they were taken for a ride.

But not me.

Why don't you just do the world a favour?

And take a swim with some piranhas?