I get scamming emails

35 thoughts on “I get scamming emails”

1. Scam emails are stupidly obvious on purpose. They don’t want intelligent people to respond. That way they don’t have to waste time.

2. I’m shocked, SHOCKED, I tell you, that you don’t want to collect what’s owed you.

3. They should have said the UN is trying to make it up to you for UNRWA.

4. Ask them to send American Express Travelers Cheques, if they still lissue them. Tell them they can keep any reasonable service charges! Small bills only, of course.

5. the Economist just released an 8-episode series the international scam industry. excellent investigative journalism:

   https://www.economist.com/audio/podcasts/scam-inc

   1. They come up with new scams all the time!

      I have not yet received one purporting to be from the United Nations though.

6. I think you should opt for the ATM Mastercard. That way you’ll always have backup money in your wallet. Just my 2 cents.

   My scam emails seem to have been replaced with scam texts. I believe the “toll road charge due” one has been mentioned here before. I get that one frequently, even though there are no toll roads within about 80 miles of where I live.

   1. I often read the entries on r/scams. The two most common scams today seem to be the “toll road charges due” and “package at post office with an invalid zip code address.”

7. Must say the domain name of that Italian email address is quite amusing and it would be apt if you were to fall for it.

8. My wife got a good one the other day. It was from some package delivery company. It was a real company from the UK. It could have been a real notice. It had the right logos. But the domain was .co.uk, and their website was just .com. If you moused over the button to track the package, it has a completely different URL. Kind of glad they make us take training on this at work.

9. I receive the same email occasionally. My Nigerian prince also communicates with me regularly.

   I feel blessed.

   1. I long to tell the Nigerian prince that I forgive him for losing my money. Please, please tell me how you communicate with him! I, too, will then feel truly blessed,
      although still poor.

      1. My Nigerian prince seeks me out using different email addresses. He’s kinda difficult to locate…

10. I receive scam emails everyday. Though I think I receive more scam texts… But I never open them and you shouldn’t either. If you don’t recognize an email address, delete without opening. At least that’s the advice I’ve been told.

    1. UN, scamming? 🙈 a smidgen of truth where the UN is concerned.
       My bank issues a how to ID scammer bulletins and recently there has been a surge in this type of scammer awareness.
       NZ’ders in one report have been scammed out of 2.3 billion dollars in 2024. God knows what a more populous country gets done for.

11. Congratulations. You may already be a winner!

12. I get about one scam phone call per month on my landline from “VISA Security” , telling me about some fraudulent transaction that they have kindly not charged me for. I often take the opportunity to play along enough to waste their time, and try to get passed along to the front-line caller’s supervisor to waste their time. (I strongly discourage anyone from trying this, since, very rarely, the scammer is moderately convincing and might getcha.) I risk it because it’s a virtuous outlet for my devious and aggressive tendencies; these scumbags are literally literally asking for it and deserve no mercy.

    1. (Hmmm. “Literally literally” seems to work even if one (annoyingly) uses “literally” to mean figuratively, via double negation.)

       1. Could “literally literally” mean “meta-literally”?

          On NPR (and no doubt it happens at every media outlet) I occasionally hear a reporter say that s/he was “actually” there (at the scene of the action), or that someone “actually” said or did this or that. I’m always relieved to hear that. It greatly helps reporters’ credibility. (It certainly beats hearing that something “sort of” or “kind of” happened. I notice that journalists frequently utter these particular locutions, but rarely if ever put them in writing. I gather that journalists make that distinction between the oral and written word and/or editors so far don’t allow that.)

          1. I take “meta-literally” here to mean “literally (literally [whatever])”. That clearly works for us traditional folks who use “literally” literally. My surprise was that it also sort-of works for the figurative-(non)-sense readers.

    2. That’s an old favourite. I get them regularly.

       1. Do yours invariably have thick South-Asian accents over crackly phone connections?

          1. Yes in fact they often do. They’re probably based overseas.

             Apparently there’s a way of making the calling number appear local.

    3. I kept getting scam calls from “James Taylor”(with an indian subcontinent accent) warning me that they were calling from the IRS and I was in trouble I forget how but I needed to call them back as a warrant was being issued for my arrest. The first 2 calls I ignored and reported to the CA Attorney General. The third I call called them and told them that it was a federal felony to impersonate a federal official. the fourth time I called them and I said had it and was going to hunt them down and kill them. I have not heard from them since.

13. I usually get ones about improved performance.

    1. Internet, or otherwise? 🙂

       1. Otherwise, 🌭.

14. I recently got a call from a woman with a strange accent (Indian ?)
    who wanted to send me a new blue medicare card. I told her I didn’t
    want the blue one but needed green or red.She kept on blabbering for 5 minutes about how much I needed this one. I then went into a discussion
    for several minutes about an eye condition that would not allow me to look
    at blue cards and demanded that she get me a green or red one.
    That did the trick and bye bye.
    Previously I used to immediately ask a scammer how to get blood stains out of my carpet and draperies. That worked quite well.
    We might as well have some fun with these assholes.

    1. LOL! 😺😺

    2. I sometimes ask them to hold on for a minute, then just ignore the phone.l. I go back after a while and say, “please continue to hold. Your call is important to us”. 😁 i reckon that while they’re waiting for me they are leaving some other poor devil alone.

15. I kept getting scam calls from “James Taylor”(with an indian subcontinent accent) warning me that they were calling from the IRS and I was in trouble I forget how but I needed to call them back as a warrant was being issued for my arrest. The first 2 calls I ignored and reported to the CA Attorney General. The third I call called them and told them that it was a federal felony to impersonate a federal official. the fourth time I called them and I said had it and was going to hunt them down and kill them. I have not heard from them since.

16. That one is clearly fraud, but never assume any caller/emailer is who they say they are.

    Some utter b*****ds stole not only my friend’s life savings, but money she held for her church. The total was about £16k.

    She was 85 years old when it happened. They did something to their number so the caller id appeared on her phone as her bank phone number. With that bank, they ask for 2 letters of your secret word. They called her several times saying there was a problem, and over the course of the calls, they managed to get all of the letters and emptied all her accounts.

    Fortunately she had called the bank as this was going on, so that was my lever to get the bank to refund all of her money after they initially refused. They failed in their duty of care and didn’t spot the ongoing fraud. I threatened to go to the press and they caved in.

    The police never caught the perpetrators, the money went from her accounts to an online account and was then sent on immediately.

    People who cheat the elderly are the scum of the earth.

    Please keep an eye out on any elderly people you know.

    1. Yes! And be aware that now some of them use voice-cloning deep fakes to trick the elderly, which takes these scams to a whole new level of sophistication. A friend was at their parents’ when they were targeted with this exact modus operandi :
       «Scammers can easily use voice-cloning AI to con family members»
       https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/fraudsters-likely-using-ai-to-scam-seniors-1.6879807

       The voice was her brother’s calling to say he was in prison after having a car accident that hit a pregnant woman. Thank goodness she had the idea of texting the brother’s wife and she replied that he was sitting right next to her! Perhaps the most infuriating part in all this is that the guy apparently doesn’t have much activity online, even less videos where they could have gotten a sample of his voice. Thus they likely cloned his voice via his phone, either with malware or simply calling his number and recording him respond to silence as if it was a bug on an automated call.

       They reported the fraud but unfortunately since the scam aborted early (the fake lawyer hooked off when she confronted him) the policed responded that there’s nothing they can do. So disgusting!

       1. Wow, i didn’t realise they could do that. It’s amazing the length that people will go to rather than do an honest day’s work.

          I’m going to pass the information round my friends and family as I don’t think any of them know of it. We are all pensioners, so it would be good to know about this sort of thing. Thank you.

17. As implied in the email, these scams are meant to target those who have already been scammed. They are viewed as easy victims (because they are, having already been scammed before). Usually, these contacts are bought and sold between scammers.

    In any case, most scams rely on making you act urgently and therefore not taking proper precautions. In recent years there has been a lot of awareness of these issues and the tactics utilized by counter-hackers and scambaiters, such as Kitboga, Jim Browning and others

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