[78-L] Just curious.. ^

[David Lennick]

Lost a decade there somewhere..2000, not 1990. I'm still having trouble getting 
my head around this decade, this century, this millennium thingy, being 64 when 
I thought I was still in my 40s....

dl

David Lennick wrote:
> My point was that the SAME wording was used in the e-mail I received yesterday 
> as was in the very first ones I got on opening my e-mail account in 1990. There 
> have been variations, but I find it fascinating that the same form letter is 
> still being perpetrated. Obviously I also win lotteries (3 this morning, I 
> think) and receive invitations to enlarge certain body parts..virtually all of 
> this is trapped by a very efficient spam filter, except for the odd one such as 
> the one I cited last night. Kind of nice to find a consistency in a very 
> inconsistent world.
> 
> dl
> 
> Steve Thornton wrote:
>> Experts on these scams estimate that at any given moment there is always at
>> least one person sitting in a London hotel lobby with a suitcase full of
>> cash waiting for their Nigerian scammer to show up. Some people --
>> reasonable, intelligent people with successful careers and families -- have
>> been lured all the way to Nigeria.
>>
>> This scam is hundreds of years old; it's essentially the same as the
>> "Spanish Prisoner" scam that purported to have a line on Sir Francis Drake's
>> fortune. People suckered in by that one continued to believe that their
>> money was due and coming soon long after the scammer was imprisoned.
>>
>> Today, it's popularly called "Nigerian" even though none of the participants
>> may be from Nigeria. As for the spam itself, you should realize that 99% of
>> the all email is spam. Any variations you notice in the amount of spam that
>> shows up in your inbox is due only to the endless cat-and-mouse game that
>> spammers and spam filter writers play. It bears no relation to the total
>> amount of spam, which is ever-increasing. You are getting many thousands of
>> spams a day that you never see. 
>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: 78-l-bounces at klickitat.78online.com 
>>> [mailto:78-l-bounces at klickitat.78online.com] On Behalf Of Michael Biel
>>> Sent: Monday, September 14, 2009 12:01 PM
>>> To: 78-L Mail List
>>> Subject: Re: [78-L] Just curious.. ^
>>>
>>>>> Don't they get tired of playing this game? Hasn't
>>>>> anybody ever noticed that it doesn't work?  dl 
>>> From: Jeff Lichtman <jeff at swazoo.com>
>>>> Actually, it does work well enough for the scammers to make
>>>> money at it. It costs almost nothing to send an e-mail to
>>>> millions of people.  If only a few people take the bait,
>>>> they'll turn a profit. If they find someone suffering
>>>> from dementia they can make a lot. - Jeff Lichtman
>>> Remember that they were doing this when it cost them money to send out
>>> snail mail letters prior to the development of email.  Back 
>>> in the 70s I
>>> sent a letter to Nigerian Radio for a verification and in addition to
>>> that I got several letters with nice stamps on them, neatly 
>>> individually
>>> typed, with the same type of scams being pulled today. It got to the
>>> point where the radio guidebooks mentioned that sending letters to
>>> Nigeria would result in these letters.  
>>>
>>> Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com  
>>>
>>>