In an age where people love to try to scam you over the Internet, it amazes me how many people actually believe someone will pay you or some picture will appear on your screen by simply forwarding an email.
I received the email below a few days ago and before it ‘graced’ my inbox, I could see that it had been to well over 200 other email addresses who recipients subsequently forwarded it. I remember getting emails like this 15 years ago when I first got email, so apparently they are still going strong.
These emails are a complete waste of time, bandwidth and storage. In fact if I were a spammer, I would have just been hand delivered over 200 confirmed working email addresses.
If you get an email like this, please do everyone a favor and delete it immediately.
Here is the email text (seriously, who actually believes this?):
Read carefully…
THIS TOOK TWO PAGES OF THE TUESDAY USATODAY – IT IS FOR REAL
To all of my friends, I do not usually forward messages,
But this is from my friend [...] and she really is
an attorney.
If she says that this will work – It will work. After all, what have
you got to lose?
SORRY EVERYBODY.. JUST HAD TO TAKE THE CHANCE!!! I’m an
attorney, And I know the law. This thing is for real. Rest assured
AOL and Intel will follow through with their promises for
fear of facing a multimillion-dollar class action suit similar to the one
filed by PepsiCo against General Electric not too long ago.
Dear Friends: Please do not take this for a junk letter.
Bill Gates sharing his fortune. If you ignore this, You will repent
later.
Microsoft and AOL are now the largest Internet companies
and in an effort to make sure that Internet Explorer remains the
most widely used program, Microsoft and AOL are running an e-mail
beta test
When you forward this e-mail to friends, Microsoft can and will
track it (If you are a Microsoft Windows user) for a two week
time period.
For every person that you forward this e-mail to, Microsoft will pay
you $245.00 For every person that you sent it to that forwards it on,
Microsoft will pay you $243.00 and for every third person that receives
it, You will be paid $241.00. Within two weeks, Microsoft will contact
you for your address and then send you a check.Regards.
[...]
Thought this was a scam myself, But two weeks after receiving this
e-mail and forwarding it on. Microsoft contacted me for my address and
within days, I received a check for $24, 800.00. You need to respond
before the beta testing is over. If anyone can afford this, Bill gates is the
man.
It’s all marketing expense to him. Please forward this to as many
people as possible. You are bound to get at least $10, 000.00
We’re not going to help them out with their e-mail beta test without
getting a little something for our time. My brother’s &nb sp;girlfriend got in
on this a few months ago. When I went to visit him [...], she showed me her check. It was for the sum of $4,324.44 and
was stamped ‘Paid In Full’.
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I delete emails like this all the time. Friends I know sent emails like these to me all the time, I hated it.
My partners & I sell ANTI Keylogger software, as part of our service to our PAID clients we have a Notification Service alerting them to scams like this. Bet you dimes to donuts there are either key loggers or other spy-bot wares once any links are clicked, or worse with embedded badware right in the email itself, even if it’s text. Our advice is geared towards those folks who are just regular online users. Your newsletter/announcements are a little advanced for most casual online users. We try to instill in all of our clients to automatically “Delete It & Fuget It”, when they get such obvious but potentially dangerous craparooni. Still folks are tempted and click on links or forward it. Social engineering is alive and well, it seems.
Justin, I feel for you that friends would send such stuff. I mean if it’s a joke because they know it’s such obvious bushwa,maybe OK. Still it can be dangerous to ones PC/Laptop if inadvertently you click on a link in the message or forward it.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could click on “Reply” and send the offenders a little surprise of our own?
Who knows, maybe someday soon, real soon.
Stay Frosty Mr. Jason
I always thought that a forwarded E-mail was a little like getting a STD. The old “you are sleeping with all of the ones your partner has slept with” line.
You can have a vast group of security on your machine, but if you get those forwarded E-mails that have 300 addresses in them, is that not opening your front door to someone that got into any one of that 300 people’s machine?