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When email messages are just forwarded directly to a disclosed list of people you send items to, all addresses may become inundated with unasked for junk, or worse. There seems to be an unending invasion of confidence tricksters. If one accepts that sufficient successes are needed to justify the efforts of these unscrupulous people, then one wonders how many people actually fall for the BS and how much they lose. This is despite the fund of specific advice from all over the world, published by VillagePRESS and by other internet publishers too. Part of the problem lie in the lists of email addresses that can be bought. If you Google sale of email addresses the results exceeded 26 million sites. Tested today, the Google search engine [including purchased advertising Sponsored sites read - Results 1 - 10 of about 26,800,000 for sale of email addresses. (0.26 seconds)How do they get the addresses? you my ask. Well, you may be one of the people supplying them free. When you receive forwarded emails from friends -- jokes, pass this on or become cursed, what a dreadful and so on, you may choose to select some to send on to friends on your list. The problem occurs if you do not send it Bcc: (blind carbon copy) -- all your friends email addresses are forwarded too. If someone then forwards it too, they may leave in the list of those you addressed it to. And so on. I often receive jokes (specially) with many previous lists - just flicked on. If a spammer gets into that list -- without 'his' email being able to be read -- every ensuing email similarly posted to a group, provides the email addresses to 'him' too. Of course the 'he' and 'him' is a computer which can analyse the list received and add new email addresses to lists already gathered..... and the operator can sell the list, over and over again. Whatever one can conceive can be achieved by smart operators. One particular name regularly appeared as a sender of jokes. Everyone on that particular contact list was contacted and no one knew him. Then by specifying him as a spam sender (a Gmail system advantage), this name arrives several times a day sending jokes to pass on. CONCLUSION: It is essential to erase everything in the email you are forwarding except the specific part you intend your friends to read. Thus removing the beginning information (and any lists) until the actual item begins, and then everything after the item ends. Just in case you think this is not important here are reports of Scams received in January this year by accommodation providers and restauranteers. The names of course are not the real names of these confidence tricksters. These have been sent to VillagePRESS to help others become aware and protect themselves. The very first person to report a scam to us, some years ago, in Jan
Nancy Mills of Cottage by the sea, Taranaki, NZ, reports another two scams Check In Date : April 10 2010 And from Alan of Para Village Tavern, Darwin, Australia Thanks Alan. And Lara OSullivan of Tablethirteen.co.za in South Africa Thank you Lara. Jisca de Blaeij of The Peninsula All Suite Hotel, South Africa Thank you Jisca From Alan Hughes of the Southdown Golf Club, Wales Thank you too Alan. We welcome correspondence on this matter. |