Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Do people REALLY fall for this?

Amongst the huge amount of spam I've received today, one email was offering me an instant university degree. Reading it I can't understand why anyone's fooled:

Hi [position]!.!
Well that's a good start - confusing my name for some position I once held. Never really on bots to retrieve email addresses.

A Genuine Univers1ty Degree 1n 4-6 weeks!
With such wonderful spelling it probably is a genuine "univers1ty" degree!

Have you ever thought that the only thing stopping you from a great job and better pay was a fe wletters behind you name?
Well now you can get them!
What are a "fe wletters"? And just how do a few letters after the name in themselves provide a booster? Recruiters look at where you got the degree from, not whether or not you have some fancy letters after the name. Is having purchased a degree granted by Tinpot Theological College in some US state in the Bible Belt really going to stand out on a CV?

Within 4-6 weeks!
No Study Requierd!
100% Verifiable!
Yes I'm sure anyone Googling for details of this university aren't going to come across it on a list of diploma mills.

These are real, genuine degrees that include Bachelors, Matsers, MBA and Doctorate Degrees. They are fully verifiable and certified transcripts are also available.
Okay Americans may do things differently, but isn't the adjective "Doctoral" not "Doctorate"? In any case I'm sure a genuine "Matsers" degree is going to stand out.

You?ll htank me later?
Indeed, what a question! Whoever wrote this probably got the job by flashing a Buy It Now degree.

Finally we have this curious ending:

retire. First, they had fought their way from the battlefield, menwould dart in and slash the hamstrings of his enemy. Lucilius's eyes
And no, I've no idea what that means!

1 comment:

cim said...

The mis-spellings (and the random string of text at the end) are deliberate and attempt to avoid spam filters.

I assume that the spammers know that no-one with any sense at all would take them up on the offer, and therefore it's more important to get the mail to as many people as possible in case one is completely stupid, rather than making it look more convincing to a smaller number of people.

It's a technique that's becoming much less effective as spam filters improve - the new style of spamming is to make the message entirely 'camouflage text' and put the real spam in an attached image.

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