I understand that u don't have a web cam.
But
u never visited a porn site????? You should....Joke....of course.
> attempting to extort $6000 from me
Boo-Hoo! How come you are worth $6K and I'm not even worth $0.25K?
This did not come TO me; the scammer screwed-up (the address is not found at the destination, though I obfuscated it just in case) and it bounced to the forged return address (me).
It was all in Spanish, which I am not good with. Google translated it SO well, I bet it was machine-translated English to Spanish. It matches George's text near perfectly.
Boo-Hoo! How come you are worth $6K and I'm not even worth $0.25K?
This did not come TO me; the scammer screwed-up (the address is not found at the destination, though I obfuscated it just in case) and it bounced to the forged return address (me).
It was all in Spanish, which I am not good with. Google translated it SO well, I bet it was machine-translated English to Spanish. It matches George's text near perfectly.
Interesting: it´s quite good Spanish, with no grammatical errors.
What gives it away is that it´s *constantly* switching between stiff/formal Spanish, and the friendly/familiar way, sometimes within the same phrase, which nobody would do.
At most, somebody might start writing the formal way to "sound like adults" and give the idea "this is not a teen prank, take us seriously" , and then switch to an informal way to emphasize "we gotcha!!! ... I´ve you under my thumb and don´t need to be polite any more" which is a show of strength and self confidence, but after that they would never ever go back to the formal way.
Thanks for posting.
PD: both Spanish versions would be translated to practically same text in English, which would rely more on context to carry mood.
What gives it away is that it´s *constantly* switching between stiff/formal Spanish, and the friendly/familiar way, sometimes within the same phrase, which nobody would do.
At most, somebody might start writing the formal way to "sound like adults" and give the idea "this is not a teen prank, take us seriously" , and then switch to an informal way to emphasize "we gotcha!!! ... I´ve you under my thumb and don´t need to be polite any more" which is a show of strength and self confidence, but after that they would never ever go back to the formal way.
Thanks for posting.
PD: both Spanish versions would be translated to practically same text in English, which would rely more on context to carry mood.
Not as simple as that, here. You are allowed to have a different number as CLI to the actual calling number, for example it may be the company head office number, or a number that can take a reply. So a simple compare doesn't work.
As I'm sure you sense, the English alternates friendly, "you have good taste and sometimes weird", "our little secret", and stiff/formal "This is the non-negotiable offer".
As I'm sure you also sense, the English is as grammatical as non-official English gets. (Far better than many native-born USA residents.) The only bit which tickles my Missouri ear is "This is the non-negotiable.." where "a" would be more common, but "the" is perfectly correct also.
I'm now wondering if it had two authors. One proposed a general scam-letter, perhaps as a joke. Someone else took it and punched-up the specific threats. Even so, it is done fairly smoothly. (My mother was an editor and sometimes had to hammer two articles together and blend different voices.)
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I got one of those exact same emails - at work of all places. The blurb about "send it to law enforcement and we'll spill the beans" was particularly rich because, well... they kinda' did that by default when they sent it to me.
Besides, I've physically disabled my webcam (as in pulled out the little ribbon cable). Hey, would you want to be blackmailed for eating yogurt straight out of the container?
Besides, I've physically disabled my webcam (as in pulled out the little ribbon cable). Hey, would you want to be blackmailed for eating yogurt straight out of the container?
I use a different password for every site/login I have. Not saying how I keep track of them all ...
One more time......I just got an almost exact duplicate of the same extortion letter. This time I'm only worth $2,000. My Bellsouth email box has been over run with spam in the past couple of years, but it has gotten much worse in the last few months. Some days I get 100 to 200 spam emails usually offering women, pills to make certain body parts bigger, cannabis oils, and other quack medicine or diets. I have used this email address for about 25 years, but it looks like I must abandon it. It will certainly mean loss of contact with some old friends with whom I don't converse frequently.
I just noticed how the text showed up after copying and pasting......this must be the "specific pixel" that the a$$hole embedded, likely a control character.
I just noticed how the text showed up after copying and pasting......this must be the "specific pixel" that the a$$hole embedded, likely a control character.
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I have a bunch of different passwords. I was in an IC research and development group at Motorola that had the highest computer security standards in the company. I adopted a system which complied with their rules, yet allowed my passwords to be plain sight at my desk. I never let on, and nobody knew, but it worked.
I still use something similar today to keep track of them all. The only issue that arises is that some places have oddball requirements on the use of non alphanumeric characters.
This looks like the "regular" load of spam that most email addresses get. Most people don't see anywhere near this amount of spam because their ISPs have filters that remove about 99 percent of it. It looks like either Bellsouth doesn't run a filter on email (this seems unlikely), or the filter is turned off for your account. I'd call bellsouth and tell them about your quantity of spam, ask why you're getting so much and if there's anything they can do about it.
Does your email client load images in HTML email? If so, there's surely an option to tell it NOT to load such images). Not loading images (or other entities in HTML email) protects you from the following:
The "specific pixel" sounds like a webbug, something I recall first reading about perhaps two decades ago. A webbug is a single-pixel image loaded from the sender's server by the HTML code, and the filename is encoded with the email address it's sent to, so the sender's server detects if/when your email address has read the email.
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