The Word Cloud

6 Comments

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  by AlanP 1 year ago

  I saw this this morning on the BBC. I have forwarded an example of my own particular bête-noir which is emails from hotmail accounts, with garbled subjects, today's was "Mos tFa vor edPi ll sSupp liedHere" which lead to a supposed Canadian drug company. Tracing the site is not difficult, it's in Ukraine.
  
  They are almost impossible to filter due to the garbled title and constantly varying email addresses. If anyone else gets this type then may I encourage you to forward them. It is a pest.
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  by mike 1 year ago

  I find this rather sad. A few years back, I had been in e.mail contact with someone over information i had. He wished to include the information in a book. (About another composer of military marches) I sent him what information I had and heard no more. A month or so ago, i got an e.mail from him; his e.mail was still on my address list, saying he had got stranded with his family in a hotel - after a theft in which all his cards had been stolen and could I help out with money? Owing to the warnings I did not reply, though the e.mail might well have been genuine. Who can tell now? I now avoid people who approach me in the street as the plea is usually for money - though their query might well be for directions. It is the world we live in!
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  by Em 1 year ago

  I suspect you were right to ignore it, Mike. Surely he could have got help from somewhere else face to face rather than asking a stranger over the internet - sounds very dodgy to me. I was in the supermarket car park a couple of years ago when a woman approached me saying she was Mr Banda's daughter, did I remember her? Of course I didn't, but I was too embarrassed to tell her that. Banda is like Smith or Jones here and I knew half a dozen. She told me she'd run out of money for her daughter's asthma medicine and could she borrow some and her father would pay me back next time he saw me. Alarm bells started to ring as I knew that I didn't know any Mr Banda that well so I asked her where Mr Banda knew me from. Of course she couldn't tell me, or made up something absurd that I knew wasn't true, so I made my excuses quickly and drove off. Turns out she made a career out of approaching expatriates with the same story as most people just say they remember her out of politeness. Another time someone sold me a load of crap (literally) and never delivered - thank goodness! I must have MUG written on my face!
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  by Spangles 1 year ago

  It is a shame when we have to wonder whether someone's cry for help is a scam, because presumably it means that some genuine cases are ignored.
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  by Steve 1 year ago

  Thanks for sharing this, Spangles.
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  by Spangles 1 year ago

  A pleasure! Strangely enough, I haven't had any spam since I discovered what to do with it!