Why Femi Olaloku sent me an email I don’t know, he has my direct number. Here’s what he sent.

Dear Cardholder,I have decided to send you this payment information in this format in order to avert the possibility of any impostor from grabbing this vital information from you on the internet.I FEMI OLALOKU, Head of Banking Operations(visit the weblink for more details: http://www.ubagroup.com/news/pressnews_020207.asp), with United Bank for frica(UBA) Plc,Bank Hrqs here in Lagos-Nigeria hereby wish to inform you that there has been a successful loading of your entire payment sum of USD$7.5million into a debit(VISA) ATM card which will enable you access your fund more securely from any ATM point.This payment directive traces from the order submitted to this department of the bank by the Federal Ministry of Finance, Abuja-Nigeria.You are therefore advised to strictly adhere to our new UBA Card Payments Scheme, fulfilling all necessary obligations expected of you as the rightful and legal beneficary of this fund and receive your preloaded ATM CARD in your destination without any further delay in view of your current absence from the country.Get back to us re-confirming to us your valid contact/delivery address to avert any imminent possiblility of deliverying this card to a wrong hand other than you(beneficiary/cardholder). All other payment details and documents will be made available to you on receiving your response. Sincerely,Femi Olaloku,Head of Banking Operations & Technology,United Bank for Africa Plc,Lagos-Nigeria.Tel.: +23417304393.

I notice that UBA Group are aware that this is happening

What intrigues me is why would anyone respond to such drivel?

Mrs.Faustina Butcher you are my best friend … NOT!!

Do you know of anyone who actually responds to this garbage?

BIG LOTTERY FUND BIRMINGHAM CENTRE,
APEX HOUSE
3 EMBASSY DRIVE
EDGBASTON,
BRIMINGHAM B15 1TR,
UNITED KINGDOM.

We are pleased to inform you that as a result of our recent BIG LOTTERY FUND PROGRAMME DRAWS (#1001) held on the 1ST of April, 2008 through computer ballot system Your email,is attached to ticket number 023-1856-790-279, with serial number 5073-10 drew the lucky numbers 43-58-42-37-69-72 Bonus No. 7, and consequently won the lottery in the first category.

You have therefore been approved for a lump sum pay out of ?2,500,000.00 POUNDS STERLING.{Two Million Five Hundred Thousand Pounds sterling} in cash credited to file REF: BLF/26510460037/02.

This is from total prize money of ?25,000,000.00 shared among Ten Lucky international winners in this category.

All participants were selected through a computer ballot system drawn from 30,000 names from Australia, New Zealand, America, Europe, North America, Asia, and Africa as part of International Promotions Program.

You have to send following details in order to facilitate the processing and release of your winning.

Name: …………………………
Nationality:……………………
Country of residence: …………..
Tel number: ……………………
Occupation: ……………………
Sex: ………………………….
Age:…………………………..
Winning E-mail Address:………….
Draw Number:……………………
Amount Won:…………………….
Ticket Number:………………….
Winning Numbers:………………..
Serial Number:………………….
This is part of our security protocol to avoid double claims and unwarranted abuse of this program by some winners.You are requested tocontact your claims officer Mr. Glenn Roeder,to assist you with the processing of your winnings and subsequent payments. =============================================================
Phone: +447031929596 +447031927041 Fax: +447005800254
Mr. Glenn Roeder. Email: claims_glenn@yahoo.com.hk =============================================================

Yours Truly, Mrs.Faustina Butcher.
Online coordinator, BIG FUND LOTTERY, Sweepstakes International Program. Open 7 days 8am-11pm. N.B. Any breach of confidentiality on the part of the winners will result to Disqualification. Please do not reply to this mail. Contact your claim agent immediately

If you are sick of receiving this garbage then the solution is within your grasp.

ACTION: Implement Action 3 and 5 and never see this garbage again. It’s that simple.

Amongst all of the moaning, complaining and waffle being written, it’s so obvious that the complainers have chosen, yes chosen, to be victims of spam. They wallow in their pity and mouth off about how horrible it is and how much time it takes up and that there is little that can be done to stop it.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say this is utter diatribe.

I’ve just checked my email account traffic for the past week

• My 15 stand alone email accounts (POP3) had 2 spam messages.
• Gmail Account 1 had 125 spam messages including 5 Google alert emails (Go figure … Google sends mail that it classes as spam!)
• Gmail Account 2 had 195 spam messages all of which were spam

I don’t use any filtering programs on my desktop nor do I use Spam Assassin or other solution on my web server.
Yeah I’m bragging, but this is pretty much a normal week for me as I use the Spam Strategies outlined in the guide..

How do I do it? I use the Spam Strategy Guide

Fixing the blame on Gary Thuerk for sending the first spam email and fixing the blame on all the others who send the unwanted email you receive is not, and never will make one iota of difference to the spam in your inbox. That’s a victim mentality approach.

Action: Fixing the problem is about taking responsibility for how you manage your email addresses and the Spam Strategy Guide is a front line to preventing spam ending up in your inbox.  

If you’re like me, when you check your email every morning, the first thing you’re met with are emails touting the latest and greatest sexual enhancement drugs, get rich quick schemes, weight loss dream pills and many other wonderful products that spammers love to promote. Have you had enough?

If you answered yes, then I have a solution for you. For those of you who’ve been reading my blog for quite some time, you know that I don’t normally post articles about products. However, a friend of mine recommended a product to me the other day that I fell in love with. It’s called XXX and it truly is a necessity for everyone this day and age.

J. Anthony from Positive Pelham expresses so well what so many of us experience when we try and use filters and software to act as a barrier to spam related emails.

What he doesn’t realise, or may be he does, that software can’t overcome psychological reactions of people.

Action: Blatent plug .. the Spam Strategy Guide overcomes psychological reasons for responding to and how emails arrive regardless of the filtering process. It also doesn’t impose gateways, please tell me you are a human, on people you already have an existing relationship with.

If this makes sense to you then please comment and explain how?

• I want a visitor to my site to be able to easily copy my email address to their email application.
• I don’t like images or feedback forms because of the above reason
• I am receiving copious quantities of email spam from my web site email address

To me the solution seems obvious … if someone is serious in making contact with you then they will complete a contact form in the first instance. Once they have proven their bona fides and you respond they then have the privelage of spamming the heck out of you (pun intended).

Andreas from Zargony has an article Scramble email addresses in views to reduce spam … the interesting thing about this article, which relates to the use of Ruby on Rails to achieve the scramble, is that nowhere did he provide a live example to prove that it actually works.

I figure that if it actually worked then this statement would not be there … The question is left open, if this method is worth anything.

Action: If the value proposition you place on your web site is compelling to the viewer then a simple form will not be a mountain to climb. The next thing to think of is if that form is getting punished with tyre kickers then make the form longer, collect more data, to get the serious people to contact you.

David Hinson - has written about how his email communication is clogged to the extent that he may give up using it.

Spoofing Madness - A client and I have been inundated with spoofing bounces the likes of which we’ve never seen. He’s about 12 hours ahead of me from a start view point but I’m running at around 300 a day.

So with all this spam happening … why are we receiving this unwanted mail?

Because we asked for it.

In all instances we’ve plastered websites, forums and more saying click here and send me an email … and we’ve been receiving just what we asked for.

• I’m working with my client to address his issue.
• Mine I’m not fussed about as it’s part of my spam activity tracking process.
• David … I can’t answer for but there are some pointers as to why on his blog.

Action: Remove all mailto: links from your site and adopt Actions 3,4 and 5 and things will improve markedly

Spammers are increasingly relying on legitimate content and web sites to cloak their messages, attempting to bypass traditional controls by passing their messages off as genuine. IT Week

And this is new?
Come on this spamming strategy has been round for ages.

"… spammers are stepping up attempts to bypass traditional content analysis protection. Spammers are using reputable web sites and content to weaken traditional anti-spam protection"

"Because anti-spam products aim to minimise the number of legitimate messages they flag as spam, spammers are seeking to exploit this by making messages appear authentic."

What email security firm Commtouch Software doesn’t realise is that they have just highlighted the issue that is the biggest weakness with filtering software.  It doesn’t work

In one case, Commtouch identified a massive outbreak of spam in January 2008, when 250m spam messages were being pumped out, where the message HTML appeared to be a Hotmail welcome message; anyone opening the message was offered Viagra.

ACTION: Implementing Action 3 ensures that you don’t receive emails such as this. Occasionally one may slip through, if so it is immediatly obvious it’s spam … and you just hit delete key.

Read this carefully …it’s totally nonsensical to begin with and secondly Paypal wouldn’t send you such an email.

Due to upcoming May 2008, and recent changes in PayPal’s Service Agreement you need to submit additional details on your PayPal account. Starting from June, 2008 all PayPal accounts will come with complete detailed information! Identity protection matters. And PayPal works day and night to help keep your identity safe.

Here’s the pretty email that goes with it.

The tell tale is the Get Verified link.It sends you to gogouk.com wich certainly isn’t a Paypal site.

ACTION: Make sure you have an excusive Spam Protected email address just for Paypal and you can then ensure that these emails just get deleted at worst or you never see them if you use the Spam Strategies from the Guide.

Initially this email looks very plausable but still has the PayPaI address.

Dear PayPal Customer,

As part of our security measures, we regularly screen activity in the PayPal system. During a recent screening, we noticed an issue regarding your account.

Our system detected unusual charges to a credit card linked to your PayPal account.

Case ID Number: PP-xxx-xxx-xxx

For your protection, we have limited access to your account until additional security measures can be completed. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

To secure your account and quickly restore full access on your account, we encourage you to log in and perform the steps necessary to restore your account access as soon as possible by clicking the link below:

There was more but be assured PayPal won’t be sending you such an email.

ACTION: If you implement Action 3 emails such as this don’t arrive or you just hit delete deleted because they arrive in teh wrong place.

Even the most advanced programs, and not even the Spam Strategy Guide, cannot take care of this one.

 It appears to affect those who were born prior to 1970.

Symptoms:

• Causes you to send the same e-mail twice. done that!
• Causes you to send a blank e-mail! that too!
• Causes you to send e-mail to the wrong person. yep!
• Causes you to send it back to the person who sent it to you. who me?
• Causes you to forget to attach the attachment. well darn!
• Causes you to hit "SEND" before you’ve finished. oh no - not again!
• Causes you to hit "DELETE" instead of "SEND." and I just hate that!
• Causes you to hit "SEND" when you should "DELETE." Oh No!

IT IS CALLED THE "C-NILE VIRUS.

ACTION: There is no action required just a change in attitude and thinking beofre you act. This applies equally to many other age groups who do this as well as respond to all sorts of emails that are blatant phishing