The Simplistic Email Scam

Just how stupid do you have to be?

 

Is there a limit to how stupid people can be when it comes to answering email scams? There is a valid reason that these keep showing up in your inbox, and that is because people actually answer them. They actually think “Oh! My goodness, Alva! Look! I’ve won $10 Million, call my boss and tell him i quit!”

Don’t laugh. People send in checks for $10,000 to email scammers, thinking that it’s a requirement to open the avenue for the large transfer to come. Many of the victims of email scams are, unfortunately, seniors. They may be entering into their “forgetful” years, (what’s the name of that disease?) and can’t really be blamed for thinking that, if they got the email, then it must be true. In most instances, the victims got their computers and Internet service as a gift from children or grandchildren, and don’t want them finding out that they got scammed for fear that the gift givers would feel responsible for their loss.

But, some email scams are just so simplistic that nobody in their right mind should fall for them. You get a note saying you won something, that they need your information in order to issue the check. But, wait a second here! How’d they send the email to you if they didn’t know your email address? Blind luck?

Blind luck

 

The following is a cut-and-paste from an email I just received (really, just a minute ago, I swear (and my Nanny wouldn’t approve!))… Notice the structure, indentation and spelling. Now, how in Hades could people be so susceptible to scams that they would actually respond to this?

Read on, this is the actual email, unedited…

My inbox overfloweth with idiotic requests

 

 

 

 

 

 

The classic, simplistic email scam attempt…

“This is to inform you that your email has just won you One Million Pound from the Free New Year Draw on our Jan18th 2012 Charity Bonanza. 14brought out your e-mail address from a DataBase of Internet Email Users and qualified you a bonafied winner of the stated winning amount. For claims, send details below

1. Your Full Names:.
2. Country/State:….
3. Address:…
4. Mobile No:…..
5. Occupation:….
6. Gender……
7. Age:…
8. Email:….”

Why do they need your email address?

They just sent you this email, supposedly only to you, because it is, after all, the “Jackpot” winning draw! Now, why in the world would you need to send them your email address?

Victim or sucker?

But, wait! There’s something else to think about. Now, this email is as it was in my inbox, no pictures, formal looking header, footer, return email address, none of this is in the email. You would think that if you were receiving an email from a great big lottery like this, that they might just have something official looking to go with it, sort of like the FBI email scam.

If they drew your name from the database of Internet users, they would already know all of this information. This is where their idiocy reveals it’s enormous head.  Maybe if they were to make it a little less obvious, as their goal isn’t really to have you send in this information, but to simply open the email, then they might have more success. Then, the worm or virus attacks your computer, steals your private and banking information, your saved login information, and your contacts lists.

Yet, if you’re actually naive stupid enough to answer these emails idiots, and some people must be that stupid because I have been answering getting these emails for over 8 months now, then you really do deserve to lose all of your money and current/future credit!

I use the “Block Sender” and “Report as Scam” options in my email inbox for these scams, yet they keep coming! I have never responded to any nefarious looking emails, nor have I ever opened a link to one, even if they look official and real. When a crafty scam attempt comes along, like another recent one I received asking me to send in information through a provided link to Microsoft, or risk losing my MSN license! The whole MSN accreditation was there, everything kind of looked real, except for the email address it was sent from.

The real FBI agent who sent you that email

If thieves can’t even bother to try to be original, or at least include some graphics that would make the email seem more official, then they should be reverse scammed. The email providers have to make some changes to the way they do things;

1) Email providers should be able to provide the originating IP address for any nefarious emails, including scams, worms, viruses, hate mail *(that’s for you, Red!) and advertisers who promise me a bodacious blonde, living right next door, who wants to jump me nightly.

2) Victims should be able to shoot or stone the scam artists, just like in Iran!

3) Anyone caught sending scam emails from their computer should be banned from the Internet for life.

 

So, what do I do?

If you receive a simplistic looking email where they ask you for information, money, or ask you to click on a link, immediately wipe it from your hard drive. Don’t even try to open the link, because it will be a worm, which will pry all of your personal information, your passwords and banking information, as well as your contacts lists. Then, everyone who is on your email and chat contacts lists will be getting scammed, because you opened that simplistic looking email.

What should you do? Write to your congressman, your member of parliament, your senator or MPP, and tell them that you are fed up with how many scam emails you receive, and since you pay your Internet provider for a secure email experience, those providers should be held liable for any costs incurred. The Internet service providers should do more than have some hard-to-find websites about scams and how to avoid them – they should work diligently to ensure that all emails you receive are legitimate emails. If an email does not have a return (or, originating) IP address, it shouldn’t be able to make it into anyone’s inbox!

Are there any emails that you have opened that turned out to be scams, worms or viruses, and cost you either money or time? Let me know about it, so that others can learn!

How to Tell a Scam From a Real Writing Job.

There are a lot of websites, advertisements and postings on social networking sites like LinkedIn (Heliumwriters, writerjobs) that offer writing jobs with salaries that seem to be rather extravagantly high.

“Earn $10,000 a month writing articles for us!”

When something sounds too good to be true, it usually is. When a job offer comes from a country like India or Pakistan, you have to make sure that the monetary values that they attach to their article submissions payments isn’t in the currency of those countries. To earn 10,000 Rupies is 0.00111 dollars (US and Canadian currencies). So,all of a sudden that $10,000 becomes $10.00! Now, do you really want to earn $10 writing all month long, submitting 30 to 120 articles per month? You can make a lot more than that writing blogs and selling ad space to retailers.

For Indian companies you may get a much better deal. That $10,000 a month actually becomes $188 per month! Now, that is more like Helium.com or Yahoo! kind of earning potentials, if you were to write 2 articles per day to titles that paid an upfront fee of $1 or $2 per article submitted. Helium offers it’s writers $1 per article submission now, but with new restrictions;

1) You must write to titles that they have chosen to receive the payment.

2) Your article submission must be better than the others submitted to that title.

Yes, that`s right – Helium is now picking and choosing the best submissions to receive their $1 upfront payments, no matter how many writing stars you have, no matter your areas of expertise or how many articles you sell through their site.

Is There Nowhere That I Can Make Good Money Writing Online?

You can make rather decent money writing for sites that offer publisher requested content titles, like at Constant Content or WriterBay. Again, though, you are up against competition, as they will purchase the best submissions only. The publishers are under no obligation to purchase any of the submissions, meaning that not only do you have some competition for that $6 to $35 article, but you have to hope that your submission rocks the publisher’s socks off.

How Much Can I Realistically Hope To Earn Writing Online?

If you can make over $100 a month on royalties from one of the so-called “writer mills” or “article mills”, then you are doing rather well. You have to enter the contests that these sites offer, because not only is there a very small monetary prize associated with winning a contest ($15 for 1st place! Just 1 year ago it was $80), but publishers will look at your article base to see if you have any articles that they could use as “filler material”. They will buy your article, and you will get from nothing to $5, but when you sell 10 or 20 articles a month from your database, you have just doubled that $100 into $200 per month.

Now, you’re not going to get rich writing online, you will have to branch out if you want to even come close to earning a living wage writing articles online, and if it’s blogs that you write, you have to hope that the people who visit your blogs will buy something through one of the advertisement links on your blog. There are no page view earnings on blogs.

Can Adsense make you rich?

No. Adsense works, and people make money off of it – but it is not a page view revenue stream income, people have to actually buy something while on your post, clicking on an advertisement and then buying something while at the intended store/website that the ad links to. So, how to earn money online as a writer?

For the normal hobbyist writer, who may be published a couple of hundred times in papers, magazines, e-zines and websites, they have to expand their Internet presence through social media and almost beg people to come to their sites. The problem is that just coming to most sites, like blogs, will not garner the post’s author a penny.

You can write at the so-called writer mills, article mills and some other informative sites, but the publisher-driven websites, like Constant Content and other like-sites. Eben though your postings are up against others for the publisher’s choice of posts to purchase, a little competition only makes you write better the next time. Any site that makes you improve your craft while you make upwards of $1,000 a month with 1 article submitted every 2 or 3 days is not all that bad in my books.

Unless you have tens of thousands of followers who regularly visit your blog posts, with 2-4 percent of them buying something from one of the ads on your post, AdSense is not going to help all that much in increasing your bank account. No, but Amazon gives you a much better chance, even though they require sales through the ad links on your posts.

You would actually be more likely to make money with a triangle, or ponzi scheme than with ads on your blogs *(and yet i have ads on my blogs). Try asking everyone who visits your blog to donate 1 cent to your personal goal of collecting the most 1 cent donations ever. Hey, you’d have a much better chance of getting rich, especially with tweets and social networking, utilizing your contact’s contacts, and so on, and so on.

Can AdSense make you rich? Only if you have a lot of rich followers who buy products through your ad links.

I really do hate to say this because a lot of “professional writers” will jump down my throat for this, but writing on the so-called article mills and writer mills can net you at least a couple of hundred dollars a month on page view royalties alone. All it takes is a thousand or so articles written to timely and popular titles. Add in article sales, their paltry upfront payments and contest earnings, and all of a sudden it is more than worthwhile, it is downright commendable.

Is there a place for AdSense in a writer’s quest to make money writing online? Most assuredly, just don’t expect to get rich, or actually earn any money at all – and be assured that you will have problems (US citizens exempt).

Put Up or Shut Up!

Is it wrong to be single these days? Is it right to bring more children into an uncertain world? With over 1 in 10 people not working, and 8 of the remaining 10 not earning enough to own their own house, car, cottage and sufficient retirement savings, computer automation in factories drying up the well paying assembly jobs and the forestry sector all but dead, where do we steer our youth? There’s really no sense in sending them to university for remedial basket weaving 101. Today’s goals for our youth to have well paying jobs is to put them into the trades; electricity, plumbing (butt crack required), carpentry, new home construction, and so on.

It’s just a jump to the left. And then a step to the right.

Starting in liberal land, we see universal health care for all, but unfortunately over 35% of the well-paying jobs are in the silly service. That means that 65% of working people have to pay the salaries of people who generally make more than twice what they make, with retirement plans to drool over. Retire from the silly service then get another job, usually back in the silly service. One pension check and one paycheck every payday. Not bad, how do I sign up?

Nepotism runs amok in the civil service. It’s rather silly, really, working for the silly service while cashing a golden handshake, pension and severance checks every 2 weeks. It’s not really what you know, it’s who you know that gets you ahead when servicing the public (prostitutes and waitresses in expensive restaurants excluded).

Howdya doowah. I see you’ve met my, faithful handyman.

Is entitlement really the same as nepotism? How can banks take billions of dollars from the government (read; taxpayers, ie YOU) and then turn around and belittle people who have lost their jobs and homes why they can’t afford to pay their credit card bills, get a family member to pay it for them, or get another job to make the payments?

What is the new mantra of the banking system?

Put up or shut up! It worked on the government and it works on people going through the lowest and most anxious times of their lives.

How can a writer make ends meet?

There are many different types of writers, but the basic two groups are those who make money writing and those who write about making money.

Much like the Occupy Movement, 1% of writers earn 99% of the available writers’ earnings potentials. But, just because people write for next to nothing financially doesn’t make them sellouts, hobby writers or losers (as many of the self-professed professional writers proclaim). It makes them realists, and it makes them writers. Writers are known to suffer, even the best selling writers of all time. Many didn’t earn good money until long after their deaths.

I am a writer. I say this because I write. It may seem like crap to many, but it is what it is. The fact that I`m published in over 100 magazines, 200+ e-zines and many, many websites does not make me a writer, but the fact that I wrote the submissions that I posted at those “useless article mills” does.

If you are insulted by “professional writers” for being a sellout, a pansy or a loser, turn the other cheek (and no, I don’t mean your face). Tell them that what you earn is a lot more than what you would have if you hadn’t written for pay-for-submissions, and revenue stream sharing websites. And don’t worry, what you earn writing online is more than likely more than what the procrastinators make.

Just tell them to put up or shut up. Most of these detractors are failed article writers, and make paltry earnings from the ads on their blogs. If you write for an article mill, hold your head high and proclaim that you are, indeed, a successful writer.