Spam scanners do a really good job. Sometimes too good. You’ll find yourself sitting there thinking, “Hey, I’m sure I used to get loads of mail – I used to be so popular”, then you’ll kick yourself and remember that it was mostly junk. So, when a mail does slip through the net it’s usually one that someone has manually typed out.
A while back (4 years ago!) I replied to one of the “419 scams” just to see how far I could take it. I ended up with pictures of documents, huge cases of gold and promises of endless riches.
This one, which I received today, is slightly different but still typical of a Nigerian-style mail..
For some reason I decided to reply to this, just for the sheer hell of it..
Luckily “Hans” was sitting in his web-cafe in Nigeria and responded quickly. Unfortunately he saw straight through my clever trick. Damn…
Tskk.. abuse. Who’da thunk it? I decide not to rise to this, and instead try to improve his English skills.
Somehow this annoyed “Hans” too, and he responded with..
How rude. Still, I’m determined to educate him…
At this point he got bored and didn’t respond. Luckily I was pretty bored of it too, so I grabbed his IP (which goes back to some Transceiver in Benin, which isn’t actually in Nigeria but just next to it) and sent a complaint to the ISP involved..
Unfortunately Benin, like Nigeria, is severely underdeveloped, and corruption is rife. This problem will continue as long as there’s people who are prepared to do anything for money.