Skip to main content

Scams and spam (cont'd)

We're all familiar with the so-called 419 scams that promise us great riches for helping to launder some preposterous fortune. Some of the originators try quite hard with the email, but Mr Conde Sanko doesn't appear to be that bothered. First of all, he addresses me as "Dear Sincerely" - a mistake which may be designed to present the image of a hapless naif, but actually confirms fairly early on that he's someone I wouldn't trust with the disposal of $11 million.

"I got your e-mail contact through my search as a reliable person," he continues, before informing me that he wants to invest in my "country/firm". I like the idea that UK plc might benefit from the investment strategy proposed in the email. Unfortunately, I'm not sure I'm empowered to negotiate on behalf of the government.

Meanwhile, a strange message arrives from Friends Reunited. The subject header is: "Greg, Discover the Heinkel Family History". It's a plug for their sister site Genes Reunited, through which you can trace your long-lost second cousin. twice removed. Although Greg is one step on from Sincerely, we're still not scoring highly on the salutation stakes. And I already know the Heinkels very well. They made bombers for the Luftwaffe during World War II. As a kid in the 70s, I didn't know much about fancy websites and misplaced email. But I did read a lot of comics where Nazis got blasted.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Fawlty Towers script? Si, senor!

Ok, so I gave ChatGPT the following scenario: "Imagine a theatrical script for a situation comedy set in a hotel in Torquay, England. The proprietor is called Basil, an eccentric man who believes the calibre of guests to be low. His wife, Sybil, is often frustrated by Basil's incompetence. They employ a Spanish waiter called Manuel, who struggles to understand English. Basil suspects that two guests, who claim to be married, may be lying." Here's what our favourite AI came up with: Scene: The hotel lobby in Torquay, England. Basil is standing behind the reception desk, looking at a piece of paper. Sybil is standing next to him, looking annoyed. Manuel is hovering nearby, trying to look busy. Basil: (to Sybil) I don't know why we get such low-calibre guests at this hotel. Look at these two - Mr. and Mrs. Smith. They claim to be married, but I suspect they might be lying. Sybil: (sighing) Basil, it's not our job to judge the marital status of our guests. Just m...
Post a Comment
Read more

Becoming a Twister board

I spent yesterday evening in an old factory building off Brick Lane playing kids' games with an organisation called Fun Fed. The idea is that a bunch of adults get together and act like children for a couple of hours. We played tag and stuck big coloured discs on ourselves so that we could become human Twister mats. There was an awful lot of running around and I was thinking that I ought to get to aikido a bit more often. Being a child is very hard work.
1 comment
Read more

It's been a tough year. Let's give ourselves a clap.

If something didn’t smell right about the UK handling of the pandemic, the British public was never going to notice. But they knew that if they couldn’t smell something, they really ought to get a Covid test sent to them in the post. There has been something incredibly British about the DIY swabs and their delivery via the gig-economy workers of Amazon, hasn’t there? Touch of corona? I’ll pop something in the post to you. Should be with you tomorrow. I suppose it was inevitable that we’d need some new kind of system. After all, the coronavirus outbreak was the first thing in the history of the NHS that couldn’t be cured by paracetamol, rest and plenty of fluids. This understandably left GPs flummoxed and anxious. The UK decided pretty early on that if you were ill with a novel pathogen – which proved deadly in maybe 1% of cases – you really shouldn’t go to the doctor. You should STAY AT HOME and spread it quickly to your flatmates or family members. And because they were now at ...
Post a Comment
Read more