[H-GEN] Theres Still Hope!

[Robert Brockway]

[ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and     ]
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On Sun, 20 Jul 2003, Joe Skilton wrote:

> Recently a Customer of mine recieved a spam email in his Hotmail
> Inbox(generic "We have 4 Mill for you here, but we need your bank
> account details first" spam) and unfortunatly for him he believed it.

FBI/nterpol reports indicate that Nigerian Scam attempts have
approximately a 1% success rate.  Amazing isn't it.

> And after sending an email to the Scammers and happily recieving a
> bounce reply a few seconds later I am happy to report that my jobs done,
> We saved our customers neck without invading his privacy (hey, I had to

Did he ever find out what a good turn you had done him?

> glance at the Paper as I put it on the scanner, not my fault I
> remembered the details), and my reason for posting this ?, if even a
> small percentage of people who use email for legit reason's went to this
> trouble mabye once a month to shutdown a scammer/spammer I recon my
> inbox would get alot cleaner :).

Indeed.  I occassionally mail abuse@ when I see real problems.  One day
someone on a large Brazillian ISP tried to relay through me (and failed of
course).  I mailed their abuse address.  Later that day I got an email
back from a real person indicating that not only were they pleased I had
emailed them, but that they had disconnected the spammer.  I was so
pleased I emailed another address and complimented the staff on effective
action against spamming (if management recognise action against a spammer
as a positive PR step, they may further encourage it).

> cheers, sorry to bore.

Not at all.  Amusing story.

Rob

-- 
Robert Brockway B.Sc. email: robert at timetraveller.org  ICQ: 104781119
Linux counter project ID #16440 (http://counter.li.org)
"The earth is but one country and mankind its citizens" -Baha'u'llah

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