Today in spam

1. From “William Jessup,” subject line “Invitation: Would you like to join GlobalWonks?”:

Dear Richard,

I wanted to follow up one last time about my invitation to join our expert-network.

We are happy to compensate you for up to $900 per hour for our client engagements. If you would like to join us, you may do so by signing up here.

If you already signed up, please ignore this email.

Hey, for $900/hour, you can call me Richard, no problem. Whatever you say, William!

I’ve kept in the link above in case any Richards in our readership would like to get in on this sweet, sweet deal. Just click and join; I’m sure the $900 checks will start rolling in.

2. From “Christina,” subject line “Re: Regarding Andrew Gelman’s Book”:

Dear Dr. Andrew Gelman,

I am Christina Batchelor, Editorial assistant from
Index of Sciences Ltd. contacting you with the reference from our editorial
department. Basing on your outstanding contribution to the scientific
community, we would like to write a book for you.

Many Researchers like you wanted to write and
publish a book to show their scientific achievements. But only a few
researchers have published their books and yet there are researchers who
still have the thought of writing a book and publishing it, but due to
their busy schedule, they never get the time to write the book by
themselves and publish it.

If you are one of those researchers who are very
busy but still want to write a book and publish it? we can help you with
the writing and publishing of your book.

With our book writing service, we can convert your
research contributions or papers into common man’s language and draft
it like a book. . . .

Dear Christina:

If you really want to hook me for this sort of scam, try calling me Richard. That’ll get my attention. Also, if this Index of Sciences Ltd. thing ever stops working out, you should look around for other opportunities. Maybe Wolfram Research is hiring?

15 thoughts on “Today in spam

  1. What’s with this question mark at the end of an “if” clause? I saw two in a poem today, but that’s a different matter. Perhaps it is considered more polite? to throw a question mark in there? Or if not? it might be intended to pique? curiosity?

  2. Regarding item 1, a college friend often said, “I’m not cheap, but I can be bought”.
    As to #2, if that abominable monster of a sentence “ But only a few…” reflects their writing style, you can do better.

  3. Of course it is a variation on advanced fee fraud. Perhaps it would be fun to play a few rounds. For those interested Scamorana has the franchise

    http://www.scamorama.com/

    “This web site curates (hilariously unsuccessful) attempts at ADVANCE FEE FRAUD.

    The sender claims to be a bureaucrat, banker or royal toadie, wanting to move vast sums into your hands, honestly or otherwise. There is no money to be moved – except yours. Palms must be greased, imaginary legal documents must be acquired – with your money. A few K here, a few K there… eventually you get wise, and retire to lick your wounds.

    Other versions of the scam play on your charity, loneliness, or naiveté (you can’t win a lottery you didn’t enter!). Orphan, cancer patient, dead bank customer, phony job offer, overpayment with a cashier’s check… same scam. You may be shown pictures of “money”. Same scam.

    This site is devoted to the ‘419’ scam – named after Section 419 of the Nigerian Criminal Code. Most ‘419’ e-mails come from West Africa, chiefly Nigeria, or Nigerian expatriates (who happily scam other Nigerians). Although 419ers have their own style, their emails, which smack of political satire, contain elements harking back to 19th century European literature.

    Yes, it’s a crime, but the letters are funny. Read them out loud at parties and see. So are the responses.
    [Some people write back just to waste the scammers’ time. That is scambaiting, and the raison d’être for Scamorama.]”

  4. I returned to this entry because today I received the spam of spam. It starts with my Name and the Title of my recent paper:

    “””
    Dear Dr. Name,

    This is Ms. Deepti from AS Computer Sciences; I would like to Extol your elegant paper with Title “Title”. It shows your potential and tenacity towards writing intrinsic paper.

    Journal welcome Acumen like you to have your unpublished rhetoric and valuable paper on any related topic in Computer Sciences, Computer languages, networking, Mathematical foundations, Algorithms and data structures, Artificial intelligence, Communication and security, Computer architecture, Computer graphics, Concurrent, parallel, and distributed systems, Databases, Programming languages and compilers, Scientific computing, Software engineering, Theory of computation, Debugs, Hardware, Software, programming, errors, Conditions, logical Verifications. Etc. towards Volume 3 Issue 1. We would like to have your article to be in this issue and I hope that should be yours and we heartfully wishes to your article to stand as Best Article of the Issue. Kindly submit your paper Research, Review, Case reports, Short communication, Opinion etc., by below links.

    […]
    “””

  5. I’ve hit the big time, getting the same spam as Andrew, namely spam #2: “Based on your outstanding contribution to the scientific community, we would like to write a book for you. Researchers like you are adding so much value to the scientific community, yet you are not getting enough exposure. No matter how many papers you publish in famous journals, you will still be unknown to common people. To solve this problem, we came up with this unique solution. With our book writing service, we will write your research contributions in common man’s language.” Etc…

    Here I’ve been spending thousands of hours painstakingly writing my own book ([1], [2]), when I could have had “Lloyd Lovell, an Editorial assistant from a U.K based publishing company” do it for me. I’m such a fool…

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