In news of the probably not-so-exciting category, I’ve noticed a huge jump in scam related spammy email lately. My email filter does a pretty darn good job of filtering out the crap but I do often quickly scan thru it to catch any false-positives. So anyway, you probably remember the old Nigerian money scam and its many 100’s of variants. Usually written in poor English about someone somewhere in the world trying to access or “free up” millions of dollars from a deceased/deposed person of some sort and “if only you would help” you could have a small percentage (in the millions) for your time and effort.
What this tells me is that people are once again falling for crap like this. It could also just be unscrupulous souls trying to take advantage of the poor economy and people who are desperate for cash. While I’m sure the latter is part of it, these folks focus on scams that work. I get about 10-20 a day now which is a huge spike. Used to, I’d see one every week or so. To see this many all at once is scary to think about.
If you’ve been living under a rock somewhere just try to remember “if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is”. In other words, don’t be an idiot. Of course, I prefer my granny’s version, “believe none of what you hear and half of what you see.”
I like the way your granny puts it. I've noticed a huge jump too, also a big increase in the, well, 'Big Increase' kind of emails. I figure this is all related to the current financial, I've heard that the two things that always generate interest in hard financial times are something for nothing and sex.
All well and good for the net-savvy and aware, however I hate to think how many people do get taken for a ride by scams like that.
That's why I love Grannies… they are always such pearls of wisdom. What I get leery of is bloggers that use the same old stock photos and never post new pics. If you are savvy enough to create a blog, then why aren't you smart enough to use a digital camera? Makes no sense…
Interestingly I get very little spam on my Cox account. My yahoo account on the other hand, Jesus Christ on a stick it gets a lot.
Ironically it is usually little old grannies that usually fall for these scammers hook, line and sinker.
I've noticed an upsurge in those spam mails, too. What bothers me is that a few are making it past my spam filter I guess nothing can catch all the spam.