Is this a joke?

Comments

# Brian Madsen said on November 5, 2006 5:36 PM:

one of my fellow MVPs here in Perth (Sandi Hardmeier) writes often about these phising schemes and i'm constantly amazed at how obvious these are.

Unfortunately it's not uncommon for non-web-savi people to actually enter their details.

i keep getting these, plus the typical "hello, i'm a financial adviser for a international bank based in Mozambique and during my annual account checks i've found an account with $36.000.000 in it and after investigating..yada yada yada..please send me your bank account details including your pin so i can empty your account real fast...yada yada yada)..

since they come out this often I'm wondering how successful they actually are...

# Tobin said on November 5, 2006 11:04 PM:

There's a sucker born every minute and that's the point of these scams. We've been at this technological party so long its extremely obvious that you shouldn't "lick the blue stamps".  Keep in mind that there are new people showing up at this party all the time. These spammers are acting as virtual door greeters saying "Welcome, here's your blue stamp. You can't come in without one."

It's easy enough for us to look at those guys and say "what idiots" but its in our best interest to stand at the door and warn everyone its not safe.

# Marshall Harrison "the gotspeech guy" said on November 6, 2006 6:04 AM:

So Bill....did you enter your data? Does you account work now? :-)

Most of the ones I get are from banks I don't have accounts with so they are even easier to spot.

I have a friend at work and we trade these things back and forth every time we encounter a new or interesting one. Rob has even exchanged emails with some of them. It can be fun playing mind games with them.

# William said on November 6, 2006 10:31 PM:

Marshall

I ]ve actually started screwing aroudn with some of the Craigslist scammers. It's amazing how far they'll go. One guy is sending me 2900.00 and another 4000.00 for a 800.00 bike - they want me to take 100 for me and then send them the rest.  I think there was a sight called Zone Hwhere the guy actually followed througha  lot of this stuff, the results were very interesting.

# William said on November 6, 2006 10:33 PM:

Tobin - you're alive?  Did you get a new phone yet you ***?  Sign on IM sometime and tell me booger stories too ;-)

# Tobin said on November 14, 2006 7:32 AM:

I'm alive, but busy.  I don't have a phone again yet. I should have one this week or so.

# Brian Madsen said on December 2, 2006 4:59 AM:

is Bill hibernating or has he dissapeared from the face of the planet again?

# Tobin said on December 10, 2006 11:49 PM:

Bill, where are you? I tried to contact you via phone but couldn't get you. Ring me if you get a minute.