ACCER Wrote:My latest thing is to return their letter to me with all the grammar and spelling corrected. I would think that someone with a big and important law firm in South Africa could afford to hire someone fluent in English to write letters.
I have been tempted to send them an e-mail with a few of my affiliate ads to see if they buy anything!
Sage,
What a WONDERFUL idea...I'll have to do that next time. I get the feeling that there are entire communities that thrive off of online scams. It's probably how some people pay their taxes!
Paypal is the one site that I really find myself being very wary when I get mail from them in my box. I have seen so many phishing scams with them in particular that even when I have legit business to attend to on the site, I worry that I am on some mirror site or something...
ACCER Wrote:My latest thing is to return their letter to me with all the grammar and spelling corrected. I would think that someone with a big and important law firm in South Africa could afford to hire someone fluent in English to write letters.
LOL! A couple of years ago I got one of those letters, and I was at home, without a job and plenty of time... so I answered them and kept communication going for like 2 months! I gave them my real number and they called me! I made them spend money instead of me doing anything. It was fun! At the end, I played my own scam and never heard from them again.
That's pretty funny. It would be entertaining just to waste the phishers time and maybe get them to consider that they can't scam constantly without some headaches and hassle.
Buzz Wrote:Also there is another scam through e-mails and I really can't believe people do fall for it. It's an e-mail where you will receive money from a rich man that recently died and want to share his fortune, jaja you just have to send information so they can give you the money.
It is too bad there isn't an easy way to give them information that leads to a sting account. Wouldn't it be funny to send information that leads to an arrest?
ACCER:
I think this is hilarious. I agree. I've read those thinking, "Yeah, I'm going to believe you . I can't even understand you."
ACCER Wrote:My latest thing is to return their letter to me with all the grammar and spelling corrected. I would think that someone with a big and important law firm in South Africa could afford to hire someone fluent in English to write letters.
Sage:
I hadn't ever thought about this, but that is a good idea. I was wondering after reading your post, "Why doesn't the gov't have something set up to forward this type of spam on to them? " I googled it and they do! Found this info at
http://usgovinfo.about.com/cs/consumer/a/spamposse.htm
Learn to Combat Spam
The FTC has a Web site at
http://www.ftc.gov/spam to combat spam and has developed a publication, "Open Relays - Close the Door on Spam," to encourage businesses, consumers, academic institutions and others to close open relays. To find out more about the open relay project go to
http://www.ftc.gov/openrelay.
Turn In the Spammers
You can also fight spammers by forwarding their messages directly to the FTC at email address uce@ftc.gov. The FTC uses the unsolicited emails stored in this database to pursue law enforcement actions against people who send deceptive spam email. Internet users currently forward over 85,000 spam email messages to the FTC every day.
I have received several mails from what it seemed like paypal. When I found out that they were not really from paypal, I immediately discarded these mails. Just recently though, paypal emailed me to inform me that someone have accessed my account. This caused them to have my accounted limited. After meeting all the requirements, they removed the limit in my account.
I was curious as to whether something like that existed yet or not as well. It's good to know that there is an avenue for reporting these kind of people though and trying to stamp out phishers and scammers.