On a lighter note, I happened across the wikipedia page about “419 scams” and those lovely spam emails that we sometimes get about how some random excessively wealthy person has left behind a fortune that is, sadly, destined to moulder away. So an enterprising would-be white collar criminal contacts you (for no apparent reason) to help take this money off his hands…
The catch, of course, being that it’s your money that ends up being taken. Which (I thought) anyone would assume, given that they were being contacted by someone that they’d never heard of. I actually thought that the FTC’s words on the subject were rather amusing:
If you’re tempted to respond to an offer, the FTC suggests you stop and ask yourself two important questions: Why would a perfect stranger pick you — also a perfect stranger — to share a fortune with, and why would you share your personal or business information, including your bank account numbers or your company letterhead, with someone you don’t know?
I’ll admit to having actually read the first one of these emails that I remember receiving. It didn’t seem as blatantly spam-like as all the “HotChix4U” type stuff or those offering to cure ailments I don’t suffer from, due to an accident of gender… But even though the story the email told was intriguing, especially for one who grew up enjoying rags-to-riches fairytales, I’m too much of a skeptic to believe that something for nothing is really going to come my way. And I thought that was the norm, but it sounds from all these articles as though a lot of people have actually succumbed to this. Snopes, of course, had the final word (for me). I really do enjoy that site.
