Is Anyone Else Besides Me Getting These Bogus Romance E-Mails Via Writing Sites?
@windchimebooks (314)
United States
May 14, 2009 11:33pm CST
It happened again tonight.
About a month ago I got a notice via e-mail from a writing site I belong to, a newer one called addsyou, that said someone had sent me a message. No biggie. I get those a lot of the time, from fellow writers on the site most of the time. However, this particular e-mail was very different. This was basically a "bogus romance letter."
It was from some stranger, someone I didn't know and had never heard of, who said he had seen my profile on addsyou and had become very interested and yadda yadda yadda. He gave me an e-mail address and didn't ask but demanded I write him back immediately. And oh yea, his English was quite broken. Here's the thing. I checked my account on addsyou and there was no such message posted anywhere on my account there. If it had been a real message via the addsyou user site, the message should have been under my account there as well. It wasn't, but I wasn't surprised. I knew it was a bogus e-mail. It was either some crook trying to get me to send my private information via a bogus e-mail he provided, thinking I would be dumb enough to send it because I would be so "wowed" with his romantic approach I guess (yea, that's never going to happen). Or it was one of those types of things I've seen on Dr. Phil, where someone in a coffee shop in another country tries to pick out someone "to woo" on the Internet, where they pretend to be someone else long enough to hopefully gain trust and, finally, ask for money..the ultimate goal here of this type of scam.
That happened about a month ago, so I reported it to the site and forgot about it. Then tonight, here comes a message from YouPublish, a site I haven't even used in months (it's a good site, I have nothing against it, I just haven't had time to put any work on there). Come to think about it, this is actually the second of these "bogus romance" letters I've supposedly received via YouPublish in the last 8 months or so. I use the same name there as here, so the bozos who write these phony e-mails obviously think I'm a man, because these bogus e-mails are always written from women (supposedly) who "saw my profile and became deeply interested" and "love is all that matters" and other such rot and of course, there is the demand (not a request, always a demand) to write them back at the e-mail they have provided. I just reported it to YouPublish tonight. And, of course, the phony e-mail I received tonight wasn't showing up anywhere on my account at YouPublish.
I'm not sure why the crooks are picking these newer writing sites to try to scam others, but if you get one of these via any of the Internet writing sites you use report it immediately to the site's admin. please. It is a scam although I am still amazed by the fact that these bogus e-mailers think someone would fall for their stupid ploy here (although some people obviously do, according to what I saw on Dr. Phil). At any rate, one way or another, the bottom line is if you get a similar e-mail out of the blue like this it's simply someone hoping to scam you out of some money, that's the end result they're hoping for here. So just wanted to warn you guys that I've now received 3 of these idiotic bogus e-mails supposedly through two of the writing sites I'm affiliated with on the Internet, so be careful with this.
Although the bogus e-mail received supposedly through addsyou last month did at least give me a good laugh in part. He said he "saw my profile and became very interested, and he really became interested in me when he saw how attractive my photo was there on the site." The thing is my avatar on addsyou is the same one I use here on mylot, which is a picture of my dog. She is cute. However, while I'm certainly no beauty queen, I do like to cherish the thought that someone could at least tell the difference between myself and my dog. :).
At any rate, be careful with this if this happens to you. It's an odd "bogus romance" e-mail out of the blue and it is a scam. Don't reply to a stranger who sends you a demand that you reply immediately, especially when it's an unfamiliar e-mail provided by that same stranger.
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