I've been using the same free email account for the past ten years and in that time, I've managed to amass quite an impressive collection of junk mail baggage which seems to occupy far more space in my Inbox than any important or personal electronic correspondents. In fact, with all this junk mail I could open a junk mail museum; a collection of some of the rarest and best known examples of e-crap the world will never want to see. My junk filter seems to do a good job of keeping the tidal wave of promotional pap away, but ever so often, something will slip through the net and as a result of my Inbox apathy and reluctance to hit the 'delete' key for fear of destroying something culturally relevant, it will remain there among the mass of other cluttered and unorganised emails and is then destined to become a treasured artifact of my little online museum.
Sadly though, it seems Microsoft thought it appropriate to remove everything from before 2005, effectively destroying my rich email heritage. Bill Gates, you have blood on your hands!!
Anyway, I've recently come across some very good luck. I received an email the other day informing me that I'd won over a million pounds in the Canadian lottery. Can you believe it? Me, winning the lottery in a country I've never ever visited in my entire life! Apparently I was “selected randomly from World Wide Web site through computer draws system and extracted from over 10,000,000 companies and personal e-mails”. I was a little dubious at first, especially when searching online for the little known 'World Gaming Board' and finding only references to 'scams' and 'cons' as well as searching for the originators email address and finding it belonged to a fashion clothing store in Ireland. “This can't be true!” I told myself, surely a board with such an official title wouldn't deal in internet scams? So I filled in the form (which asked a for a little more detail than I'd expected) and sent it off to the Chinese email address supplied (which also seemed rather an odd email suffix for The Bank Of Scotland). I've heard nothing back yet, but I'm certain I'll be receiving my big cheque from “The Special Global 2010 Promotional Draw” any day now...
In the meantime, I'd better contact Microsoft who have apparently deleted my email account (which is strange because I'm still using it). They need my email address and my password, which of course, being Microsoft, I'm happy to supply. The spelling is a little off and the excessive use of triple exclamation marks and scrolling marques doesn't really seem like the work of a professional multinational organisation, but hey, maybe Mr Hotmail was having an off day when he wrote it. I've sent off my details and am hoping to get a reply from the Indian based email address any day now telling me my account is re-enabled. Fingers crossed!
And the excitement doesn't end there! I came across an email under the subject heading: Awaiting your urgent reply. “My word!” I thought. “This seems like something rather genuinely serious!” So I opened it up, and surely enough, I found the distressed pleas of a Liberian gentleman by the name of Dennis Hodges. “That doesn't sound like a very Liberian name to me” I thought to myself, but his predicament seemed so serious that I couldn't afford to turn a blind eye. Apparently he is unable to release his dead father's funds (around $9.5 million I'll have you know!) without a foreign beneficiary. He was particularly looking for a “God fearful somebody who is Christian” in which to “entrust and transfer into his country account”. “I'm a God fearful somebody!” I thought, but became immediately unsure what a “God fearful somebody” was exactly. I did however express that I was interested in his deal, or 'intersected' as he'd put it and promptly sent my relevant personal details his way. The guy was writing in full caps, how could I possibly ignore that?
In all seriousness though, unless you enjoy watching your bank balance drop drastically, I wouldn't recommend anyone open junk mail messages or click any links contained therein, let alone send any details or replies to these messages. I did so using a fully fire-walled machine with anti virus and the little known commodity 'common sense'. Over the next few weeks however, using nothing more than Google, a dummy email account and an old computer free from personal data, I intend to carry out the unspeakable and actually reply to these emails in an attempt to contact the scammers themselves or the poor unfortunates who've had their email accounts hijacked. I'll keep you posted!
