How stupid do they think we are?

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Thought I'd share this with the boards.

The better half has bought a new car, and she is therefore selling the old one as advertised on auto-trader. It's a ten-year old Saab with a 145k miles on the clock.

This is an email from a purported "buyer". Hardly the most credible scam I've heard of!

'Cos I'm sure you need a lot of old Saab's in Canada, and are willing to pay over £6000 to ship them out - you backwards nation you!

In case people are wondering, although the cheque funds are immediately available, after a month the banks checks will deem the cheque to be forged, and the bank will reclaim all of it's money. In the meantime someone has made off with your car and a large sum of your cash.

 

Scams like this only need a 1% success rate to be a success. At least, that's my guess. I mean, the Nigerian money scam has been around for at least 40 years and it STILL WORKS! All you need is a sucker or someone senile and you're richer than you were before!

 

Breakin' yer own rules, there, Tal! I'd say the horrendous spelling in the excerpt is bad enough.

I see these people all the time in the core of my city. Panhandlers who tell you one day they have 4 kids to feed, tomorrow the number is 7, and they run their scams with such energy! All they need to do is find one sucker a day . . .

 

If they're going to scam someone, check the spelling! It's like they just came out of RuneScape or from an IRC.

 

Is there a point to the y?

 

Now-now; not ALL of the 'Nigerian Scam' emails sent out have all-caps subjects....just most of them.

Strangely, I only received one variant to that scam EVER in maybe fifteen years of being 'wired' - it was purportedly from the son of the (supposedly) deposed Liberian president hiding out in Nigeria, predictably needing to launder vast amounts of money through MY bank account.

Sadly, the con artist made up the son's first name, and ENDED UP MATCHING MY FIRST AND LAST NAME!!!

 

I still want to know who the nutjobs are that actually respond and pay over money to these scammers.

 

To get a successful scam in one out of a billion trillion bitrillion mails sent out is enough. Emailing has little cost, the return is far greater. Only stupid people don't try to use these scams.

 

It does make having to pay a small amount for sending an email seem a better idea though.

 

true - that WOULD make email 'marketing' (even general spam advertising) dry up considerably - apart from those who can manage to pull in enough sales/revenue to cover the expense...but then, they'd probably have legitimate products.

At first I thought of this and almost typed "but that would be the end of free communication"; then I looked at my two email accounts - I haven't sent ONE email in the last six months! On the other hand, I still have over six HUNDRED pieces of spam in my 'junk folder' for just ONE account, and they date back as far as a month ago.

So let's hear it - micro-charge for email sending on all existing servers and providers! (pity it'd take a metric buttload of work to retroactively change ALL the emailers out there...)

 

Now I just have to ask this -- how does a "metric buttload" compare to an "imperial buttload"? It's questions like these that keep me awake at night.

I don't want to even think about the idea of charging for e-mail -- I use my account quite a bit and really don't need another expense. What needs to happen is that these guys who do these sorts of scams need to the executed when they are caught -- well, maybe just slapped around a little. You get my point.

BTW, teek, I don't use these scams -- does that make me stupid?

 

I don't know - what if the cost was really minimal - like a penny per e-mail? I can't imagine most people send more than a couple hundred e-mails per month, so for the cost of a couple bucks per month, it would probably greatly reduce the incidence of spam, who need to send out thousands of e-mail daily.

 

The thin edge of the wedge, my friend! It'll START at a penny a send, and then . . . they'll raise the prices. Keep the Net free!!!

 

there is another idea, let email sending do a trivial math loop so to delay the sending time. Let's say, 30 sec an email, that would also greatly reduce those spammers efficiency.

 

I hope this was just an unfortunate turn of phrase because, if it isn't, you just called anyone who chooses not to try and scam people stupid.

 

Well I hadn't intended this to go into the Alley, but it was me own fault I guess.

Monty,

I thought that most of the spam was sent out from a single location (i.e. the spammers computer) with an piece of software used to disguise/change the real address. Hacking into other peoples machines is rather more technical and I think having to pay would still reduce spam.

On a slightly different note I have another particular dislike about this issue. It would have been easy to do a sting operation, take the check, wait for the guy to turn up and hand him over to the police. Would they have been interested though? Not a chance in hell. There have been a couple of cases recently where people have done all the leg-work, tracked the theif down and got all the evidence required (stolen cars parts on ebay springs to mind) and the police still aren't interested. I think in that instance, they actually brought a successfull civil case.

[ July 26, 2007, 14:50: Message edited by: Carcaroth ]

 

I received the same type of email when I post rents on craigslist. Some people have no morales.