If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it! Honestly, it reminded me of some old horror movie… think “Nightmare on Elm Street” or “Friday the 13th.” You know, the kind of movie where the super evil-bad guy just won’t die. Even though you think the movie is over, there’s always that last scene where the monster pops up once again (usually as the cute boy and girl are kissing and you think it’s all over), and somebody has to kill the monster all over again. Credits roll, movies over, but we’re always left to wonder…
That was exactly the feeling I got when I opened my e-mail inbox earlier this week, and once again saw that all-too-familiar e-mail. Yes, you know the one I’m talking about. That private, confidential, don’t-share-this-with-anyone-else message about some West African diplomat depositing 5 1/2 million dollars into my bank account! I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. It seems an e-mail like this arrives in my inbox about once every six months. It’s always the same scam: someone, somewhere wants to give me a ton of money! Why they just can’t drive to my house and hand me a suitcase stuffed with $100 bills, I’ll never know. You’d think with all that cash just lying around waiting to be delivered it would be easy to pick up the phone and call me and say where can we send the money? But it never seems to happen that way. Unfortunately, some records somewhere have been lost, and I need to send them all sorts of important personal information, just so the money can be delivered and deposited into my bank account.
Honestly, isn’t the sheep’s clothing starting to wear a little thin on this wolf? Is there anybody left on the planet that hasn’t heard of this scam? I suppose there must be, or they wouldn’t keep trying it. Or, for those of you who really believe in technology run amuck, I have this vision of some ancient computer churning out this e-mail, day after day, century after century, buried deep in the bowels of some mountain hideaway, long since forgotten by the human evil genius who created it. Wow, now that I think about it, that would make one heck of a great sci-fi movie plot wouldn’t it? Well, that’s another plot in another story for another day.
So, what have we learned here? A good scam, like a good movie monster, just keeps coming back for more. You can kill it once, but chances are there’s a sequel lurking right around the corner. In the case of scam, bogus and hoax e-mails, there is always a new crop of potential victims waiting on line to be duped by an ages-old hoax. I know you won’t fall for this! And while I’m not a big fan of spreading around e-mails that warn people of scams and hoaxes, it might be good to talk to your circle of colleagues and business associates and just let them know that you’ve seen this thing again and it might be coming to their inbox as well.
Of course the real problem is not old-school scams and hoaxes like this one. It seems Internet bad guys are always thinking up some new way to separate people from important, confidential personal information, if not cash outright. A while back, I prepared an entire series of 10 videos, each giving a little bit of information about e-mail scams and hoaxes, and how to avoid them. The series also talks about spam, and how to avoid it. We’ll never be completely spam-free, but there are a few things we can do to keep the flood of spam down to a small trickle coming into our inboxes. The link at the bottom of this post leads to the first series of videos on YouTube. You can find the rest of the series on YouTube, or sign up to have them delivered to directly to your inbox. I’ll include a link for that series at the bottom of this post as well.
Don’t fall for these old-school hoaxes and scams! Simply stay aware and alert to the fact that some scams – just like some of my favorite good old rock ‘n roll songs – keep getting played over and over again. When in doubt, the easy answer is always to simply hit the “Delete” button, and know you’ve done your part to make sure this e-mail monster doesn’t claim another victim.
Click this link for the first e-mail security video on YouTube
If you’d like to have the entire series of videos delivered right to your inbox, click this link to sign up.
Stay safe out there!
