Here is a clear, cut case of spamming one's blog! The following was posted as a comment to one of my blogs. The comment had nothing to do with the subject matter of the blog.


I wanted to let you know about our company. We sell 3 day 2 night travel certificates that are used by many companies as incentives.

The cost is only 0.35 cents each and they come with your company name and website imprinted on the certificates.


http://www.~.com

Think about using these for referrals or give them to customers/clients. You can sell them for a profit to your down-line.

The end user of the certificates has a choice of over 20 destinations to pick from. Take a look at the destinations at the website. http://www.~.com

They pay a processing fee of $12.00 and the taxes on the room which is about $7.00-$12.00 a night depending on the location.

http://www.~.com

Of course I "rejected" the comment

"If You Can't View The Image Click Here"

I got one of those emails today. At the top it said if you can't view the image then click on the link that was provided.

It is always a very good idea to run your curser over the link just to see where that link goes to. If you're not familiar with that link then you should beware and not click on the link if you're not comfortable doing so.

Of course the email itself didn't show the image and personally I think it was some kind of ploy to get me to click on the link.

I didn't click on the link! And I deleted the email!

Have You Gotten An Email Like This One?

DEAR FRIEND,

I am Mr ~ Executive Director of the Hang Seng Bank Ltd,Sai Wan Ho Branch,171 Shaukiwan Road Hong Kong.

An Iraqi named H~, a business man made a numbered fixed deposit of (139,513,102.50 HK) for 18 calendar months, this is valued Seveteen million Eight Hundred and Sixty Thousand United States Dollars only in my branch. Upon maturity several notice was sent to him, even during the war, three years ago (2003). Again after the war another notification was sent and still no response came from him. We later found out that H~ and his family had been killed during the war in Gunfire that hit their home at Mukaradeeb where his personal oil well was.

After further investigation it was also discovered that H~ did not declare any next of kin in his official papers including the paper work of his bank deposit. And he also confided in me the last time he was at my office that no one except me knew of his deposit in my bank. So, Seveteen million Eight Hundred and Sixty Thousand United State Dollars is still lying in my bank and no one will ever come forward to claim it. What bothers me is that according to the laws of my country at the expiration five years six months the funds will revert to the ownership of the Hong Kong Government if nobody applies to claim the funds.

My proposal, I am prepared to place you as the next of kin in a position to
instruct HANG SENG BANK to release the deposit to you as the closest surviving relation. Upon receipt of the deposit, I am prepared to share the money with you in half. That is: I will simply nominate you as the next of kin and have them release the deposit to you. We share the procentange 50/50. I would have gone ahead to ask the funds be released to me, but that would have drawn a straight line in my involvement in claiming the deposit. I assure you that I could have the deposit released to you within a few days. I will simply inform the bank of the final closing of the file relating to H~ I will then officially communicate with my Bank and instruct them to release the deposit to you. With these: all is done. I am aware of the consequences of this proposal.

I ask that if you find no interest in this project that you should discard this mail. I ask that you do not be vindictive and destructive. If my offer is of no appeal to you,delete this message and forget I ever contacted you. Do not destroy my career because you do not approve of my proposal. You may not know this but people like myself who have made tidy sums out of comparable situations run the whole private banking sector. I am not a criminal and what I do, I do not find against good conscience, this may be hard for you to understand, but the dynamics of my industry dictates that I make this move. Such opportunities only come ones way once in a lifetime. I cannot let this chance pass me by, for once I find myself in total control of my destiny.

These chances wont pass me by. I ask that you do not destroy my chance, if you will not work with me let me know and let me move on with my life but do not destroy me. I am a family man and this is an opportunity to provide them with new opportunities. There is a reward for this project and it is a task well worth undertaking. I have evaluated the risks and the only risk I have here is from you refusing to work with me and alerting my bank. I am the only one who knows of this situation, good fortune has blessed you with a name that has planted you into the center of relevance in my life. Lets share the blessing.

If you give me positive signals, I will initiate this process towards a
conclusion. I wish to inform you that should you contact me via official channels; I will deny knowing you and about this project. I repeat, I do not want you contacting me through my official phone lines nor do I want you contacting me through my official email account. Contact me only through the numbers I will provide for you and also through the email account that i will provide therein in this email.

Further more be informed that the fact that you are a foreigner give you the privilege to stand in as my deceased client beneficiary as my deceased client had no relation all his family died with him during the war and I can not use my relation because its not accepted here in Hong Kong. Also I am very confident that we will be able to establish the trust that is needed to complete this deal and all that I need from the time been is your willingness and commitment so that we can end this in the nest one weeks.

What you need to understand about this transaction is that I will make sure that it passes through all international banking laws regards to this I will take care of all the expenses and the cost of retaining the service of my Attorney to give the transaction the proper documentation that is required to perfect the finishing. Your only obligation in this transaction will be to set up two offshore accounts that can accommodate these funds and I will give you more light later once you agree to partner with me.

Like I said before there is no risk involve as it will pass through
international banking laws and all documents related to this transaction will be sent to you by post for your perusal and trust.

I do not want any direct link between you and me. My official lines are not secure lines as they are periodically monitored to assess our level of customer care in line with our Total Quality Management Policy. Please observe this instruction religiously. Please, again, note I am a family man, I have wife and children. I send you this mail not without a measure of fear as to what the consequences, but I know within me that nothing ventured is nothing gained and that success and riches never come easy or on a platter of gold. This is the one truth I have learned from my private banking clients. Do not betray my confidence. If we can be of one accord, we should plan a meeting, soon. Should you be interested I will prefer you to reach me
on the email address below.

E-mail:s~@yahoo.com.hk

Your earliest response to this letter will be appreciated.

I await your response.

Mr S
s~@yahoo.com.hk

Greetings from Amazon Payments

Your bank has contacted us regarding some attempts of charges from your credit card via the Amazon system. We have reasons to believe that you changed your registration information or that someone else has unauthorized access to your Amazon account Due to recent activity, including possible unauthorized listings placed on your account, we will require a second confirmation of your identity with us in order to allow us to investigate this matter further. Your account is not suspended, but if in 48 hours after you receive this message your account is not confirmed we reserve the right to suspend your Amazon registration. If you received this notice and you are not the authorized account holder, please be aware that it is in violation of Amazon policy to represent oneself as another Amazon user. Such action may also be in violation of local, national, and/or international law. Amazon is committed to assist law enforcement with any inquires related to attempts to misappropriate personal information with the intent to commit fraud or theft. Information will be provided at the request of law enforcement agencies to ensure that perpetrators are prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

Click to verify and update your informations on our secure website

Of course the link goes somewhere other than an official site of Amazon's

You really do have to be careful about what links you click on when you get email!

"Nigerian" Email Scam

Good day, I am R~, a staff of BROWN SHIPLEY PRIVATE BANK UK.I am Contacting you in respect to US$15 Million deposited with our private bank whose original depositor died in mid 2003, In line with our internal processes for account holders who have passed away, we instituted our own investigations in good fate to determine who should have right to claim the estate. This investigation has for the past years been unfruitful. We have scanned every continent and used our private investigation affiliate companies to get to the root of the problem all to no avail. The bank will by the end of its financial year in 2007 broadcast a request for statements of claims, failing to receive viable claims they will revert the deposit back to BROWN SHIPLEY PRIVATE BANK accounting system.If you are familiar with private banking affair you will agree with me that the world of private banking especially is fraught with huge rewards for those who occupy certain offices and oversee certain portfolios. As a matter of fact, my present official capacity as the Executive Director Audit sector dictates that I am the only party to supervise the investigation in relation to the deposit and the beneficiary of the deposit. My proposal: I am prepared to norminate you as the next of kin and have them release the deposit to you. We share the proceeds 50/50.There is a reward for this project and it is a task well worth undertaking. I have evaluated the risk and the only risk I have here is from you refusing to work with me and alerting my bank.if you find yourself able to work with me, contact me through this email account. If you give me positive signals, I will initiate this process towards a conclusion. I wish to inform you that should you contact me via official channels; I will deny knowing you and about this project. I repeat, I do not want you contacting me through my official phone lines nor do I want you contacting me through my official email account. Contact me only through the numbers I will provide for you and also through this email address. I do not want any direct link between you and myself. My official lines are not secured lines as they are periodically monitored to access our level of customer care in line with our Total Quality Management Policy. Awaiting your immediate response.

Thanks for your co-operation.
Kindly send your response to s~.com
Sincerely, R~

My first thought was to paste the entire email including the actual name and email address that appeared in the email but I decided not to do it.

I saw a segment on television where this news team tried to track where this kind of email was coming from. They got all the way to talking with the actual person that was "handling" the deal.

Would it surprise you to know that a lot of people have fallen for this type of email scheme?

Are You An AOL Member?

Here is a recent email:

Welcome to AOL Customer Support
Dear AOL Member

It has come to our attention that your AOL Billing Information records are out of date. That requires you to update the Billing Information. Failure to update your records will result in account termination. Please update your records within 24 hours. Once you have updated your account records, your AOL session will not be interrupted and will continue as normal. Failure to update will result in cancellation of service, Terms of Service (TOS) violations or future billing problems. You must click the link below and enter your login information on the following page to confirm your Billing Information records..

Thank You

---

The last line of the email provides a link to "customer support" only that link does not go to an AOL page, it goes to another site! You can tell this by positioning your cursor over the link but not clicking on it!.

Of course this email is an attempt to get your AOL sign-in information! Once you type it in there is no telling what kind of damage can be done to your AOL account!

AOL themselves have said that they will never ask you for your password. So if you get an email like this do not click on that link! Instead get in touch with AOL yourself!

Grant Funding

Here is what the email said:

Don't miss your chance! If you can't read or see this e-mail. Click here or enable image viewing on your browser.

I guess these people don't know that I do grant research for a living so there is really no need for me to click on their link. I wouldn't have done it anyway - who knows where that "click" would lead to?

Since the email didn't say anything about grant funding in the email itself - this is probably another clever ploy for you to click the link to go to their website.

I know that a lot of people don't know the "ins and outs" of grants and the whole grant program process. That is one of the reasons why I started my Grant Basics 101 Blog. If you visit my grants blog you will find some general information about grants and the grant process in general.

Since I didn't visit the link on the email I really can't tell you too much about them since the link was all that was provided in the email.

"If You Can't Read This Email.........."

Ever get the annoying email that you open and it says if you cannot view the images or see the links then "please click here" - this is supposed to be a clever ploy to get you to click on their link and go to their site! The problem is that you don't know what you will be getting yourself into if you click on that blue link!

Do You Belong To A Yahoo Group?

Do you belong to any of the many Yahoo groups?

I do. Some of the Yahoo groups that I belong to I have chosen to get the posts by email. Of those Yahoo groups that I belong to - not all of them are moderated which means that anyone can post to them which means that anyone can post spam posts to them - and they do.

I'm deciding whether or not to get rid of my memberships to those Yahoo groups that I belong to that are not moderated because the spam email that I get just clogs up my inbox.

I'm sure its easy to say that one should just delete the junk mail but when it is so much junk mail it becomes very annoying!

The Spam Blog

I decided to start this blog after an annoying session with my email box. About 50% of it was either spam mail or junk mail and some even had my real name on it.

It is just so very annoying to get so much junk mail and I didn't find a website that talked about it exclusively so I decided to start this blog.

Now who would want to read a blog about spam? How about the people that hate it!