I've seen it all, now.

hi marti. i am still receiving fraudulent emails from lotteries, paypal (of course they are not really coming from paypal), etc. this past few months, until now, i am receiving messages form UPS, as they say. but i do not open them, i do not read them especially if those mails landed in the spam folder.

It may seem to you that these are funny and that nobody would ever fall for them. But you know what, there are people who are just as gullible. Mostly those who only have a few experiences on the world wide web. It's really sad, I actually cam across a lot of those. Including those emails that would tell you that you've won a lottery somewhere or that same one where he's like to transfer his money to you for a while and you'd get 10% of the Millions of Dollars his parents supposedly left him. Not to mention the countless mails telling you that there's a hiring somewhere and that you've been chosen because of your background (when in fact you have no idea where they got it in the first place). A lot of these scam email have victimized a lot of people as well. One particular story I'd like to share happened to my uncle. He lived in the province here in our area. A very secretive person and doesn't really mingle a lot. Then suddenly, he went to us from the province asking us that he's like to stay for a few days, to which his brother (my father) agreed. We didn't know the reasons but he would leave so early because he says he needs to process some papers. He got himself a passport, some tests and finally some medical labs. Since my father was a medical practitioner, he (my uncle) asked my father about a certain vaccine to which my father was shocked that the company he (my uncle) would be working for would need such a thing that was to avoid some type of fever which was now obsolete because it was used in the 1950's. At that point, he disclosed that he was being hired by a European country to work for their Hotel and that he needed to follow up on the papers and he is to send them to them by the end of the month. etc. The only thing that made me think about (since my father asked for my assistance in the matter of checking the background of the company) was the fact that the email address of the 'company' was '@yahoo.com'. I told my uncle that yahoo is a free account and if that company was really huge, it could well afford the domain and the hosting, right? Still, he didn't believe me. I tried calling the number stated on the email - it was amazing that they have a customer service something that would really pick up the phone but would tell you to call back later because the 'in-charge' was out. It wasn't until I had a friend in that area that I asked to look into the matter. The supposedly Hotel was an empty lot! My uncle was really in grief because he has already spent so much for the processing and such. But we told him he should have told us about his plans so that we could tell him or help him research. To which he says he didn't want anyone to know because the opportunity might be flooded by other applicants. He did have a valid reason for keeping it a secret. But it cost him a lot because of that phony e-mail. Therefore, whenever there's someone trying to scam me, I make sure that I report these sites or email and forward it all to my friends and relatives so that they would be aware that the website or the e-mail wasn't genuine.

It is sad, alot of people, that are not real familiar with the internet will probably do it. I am glad you report it, I would too for something like that. I do not report all the stupid ones, that say you have inherited 500,000 dollars from some other country. That is all I would get done doing.

Hi Marti Some of them just do not think and do stupid things like that or like you say they must think we are stupid I just do not get it why People have to do this, the thing is though there will be some poor person out there that will fall for it

lol, oh yes I sure have gotten emails like this. I have gotten many of them in fact. They are so stupid and to think that we are stupid... I report them all...each and every one of them!!!!!! It is our duty to report them!!!!

That's just too funny.

Wow...you reported it as fraud? How many of those have you reported so far? I usually delete these. Some of these are just to check if you are an active user. Once you open the email (even if you haven't opened the attachment) the sender gets the message that yours is an active email and there are chances that you will be flooded with more spam. I delete most of it without opening them. I'm not even sure any of them are caught and prosecuted. Do let me know if they are. I'm all for doing my bit...but not unless it's really necessary.

So sad I don't have such funny mails in my spam Had once a mail asking for my paypal details to confirm(?). I went to the site, and as expected, nothing of that sort was needed. I just reported the mail. But usually I ignore the mails (just a glance at the subject)....

Hey Marti, I've been getting a lot of strange emails lately and these particular ones I've been judt deleting. But I would prefer to repaort them if I know where to report to. I get frequent ones claiming to be from ebay and I always reported them but since it's been a while I've forgotten where I report them. It's just amazing how stupid these people think we are today. Unfortuneately there are a lot of people out there that don't know anybetter. Love Leenie PS Did you find my email on the 8th of this month?

You'd thing the scammers would at least have the brain power to use an email addy that at looks like it might have come from Microsoft. OK Microsoft has their own domain, so hot mail is out. But even Microsoft and something else @ hotmail Or microsoft misspelt and something else @ some obscure throw away domain would convince a few stupid people.

I don't know...your never know, Steve Jobs could just be wanting to "spread the love." It could be his girlfriends account, or maybe aliens hacked his account and gave him a female re-assignment. In any case, I'm glad someone is spreading the love.

You are calling that your still suspicious I'am cent per cent sure that this is a fraud E-Mail. These fraud mailers think that they can extract our account details by sending these mails and make us stupid but you know what some people are indeed that much stupid and believe all in what they say. Hard to believe that I'am also one of that dumb because I end up giving my Bank ACCOUNT DETAILS to one of such type of fraud mail senders as they were claiming that I have won $10000... in a lottery in which I've not even participated in. But that was when I was newbie to internet. Now for your other question taht how you can handle this mailer and how you can reply to this mail. I have a solution. Just type that 'Hello! Dear Customer, This is Microsoft. We've detected you as sending fraud E-mails therefore your account will be suspended. If you don' wanna get suspended just tell all the users whom you have sended fraud mails that you are a hacker and say sorry to them. Yours Truly (and Original) Microsoft ©®™" L0L.Hope that resolves all your queries.

I receive these sorts of e-mails all the time "supposedly" from World of Warcraft account support or something like that, at least 2-3 a day (they get filtered to junk mail now). The thing is they are good imitations as they falsify the headers so the e-mail address in the main e-mail looks like it comes from World of Warcraft, luckily I read on-line to view the source code if I am suspicious of an email (it usually has a hotmail e-mail in there somewhere with lots of numbers). In some of the false e-mails they even put a link to a fake log in page so it does not look too suspicious, but if you hover over the link it should be different than what you have your mouse on. An example would be that they say your account was caught of cheating in the game and you must log in to correct it. I would report them (and have in the past), but there's just so many a day now and I just cannot be bothered (there all by different e-mails).

I suggest you report to microsoft and yahoo that email add, those people are burning and ripping off millions of internet users... --

Good morning, Marti. Many, many "neophytes" in the computer world...ARE NOT STUPID, as I find so many are being called....WE ARE "NAIVE"! Yes...there are many of us soooooo "naive" that in this "new" virtual world we are scammed and spammed. Many of us grew up in a world, where the only real "shyster" was a "Used Car Salesman" and it is hard for us to conceive of this mis-use of our trust! I am a little more "learned" now (we all had to begin somewhere)...and I do not open any thing I do not recognize...just highlight the message, and "Block Sender" and NOW I get very, very few of them...as the first address in my "address book" is "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" and it seems to confuse a lot of the mass mailings! I owe you a e-mail....and will get on to it soon! Just a pile of stuff going on in my personal life that has me baffled...and depressed. HUGZ and Cheers!

Hello mental ward. I get enough scams as well. The ones from the raifeissen hackers - i marked their hole domain as spam in my filter at yahoo, so i blocked those jerks. I get a lot of "you won the national lottery" or "friend i want to send you 10000000000000000000$, just send me 100-500$ first for taxes or other crap like that". One of the latest i got was from the prime minister or something of Gabon, and the hacker actually got his fact right, i looked up the info on wikipedia ^_^ but of course i will not spend a dime on this types of scams - we are to poor to trow money to cheaters.

since i have gmail its better than when i had other email addys with that crap but when i have time i try to report them through hitting spam and forwarding them to that spam/gov email addy that is suppose to look into them

That is funny! I receive a lot of emails like that. I’ve had a couple from PayPal asking me to enter my details again because of some problem. They didn’t address me by name but simply said “Dear customer…” or something along those lines. What makes me laugh is that they try to make the email itself look as authentic as possible with logos etc but the email address is Bob@yahoo.... They are stupid so they think we are too. I have won so many lotteries and have been offered so many job, I must be so lucky!

they are so darn creative with their phishing message, but somehow they didn't even give much thought into the email address... sounds like a bunch of irresponsible kids who just learned how to use a PC, while reading 'Phishing for Dummies'... it's amazing about the kind of morons there are around out there..

Well I own a Battle.net (World of Warcraft account) and I receive at least 2 or 3 scam messages/week leading to a website which either 'generously' provides you with a keylogger or tricks you into giving your account details away. They sometimes tell you that your password has been changed and if you didn't do it yourself, you should be worried and 'change' it again through their fake link. With the new expansion coming out soon, e-mails promising free beta keys have been going out to players like crazy for the last month or so! What makes me truly worried is that lately the emails have had believable website addresses and sender e-mails (the real one show only when you hover the links). They used to be full of grammar and spelling mistakes but now they are almost flawless. People, beware!