What’s in your INBOX?
What is SPAM?
chopped pork and ham,
unasked for bargains from Rotterdam.
What is a SCAM?
an email sham
of dodgy stuff
of lies and bluff,
tales of woe,
of prizes to go.
Trying to befriend
you, in hope that you send
your mother’s maiden name
all part of the game.
It’s PHISHING
They’re wishing to have what you have.
Easy to type
write tripe
build hype
around a fortune for you,
a coup
of your account.
Scam, sham, fraud,
bored of this game,
the shame
if you swallow the bait
it’s checkmate.
Someone’s exploiting and
being exploited
abused
ill-used.
Stupid, grubby, lying, ungrammatical,
time-wasting, ugly, harmful, slightly amusing
but not really funny
just after your money.
Words have power.
We cower or tower
at what is said or
what is read.
There’s a rich thesaurus for this feat:
sting, rip-off, trick, swindle, cheat,
fleece, dupe, con, fiddle, hoax.
Please don’t delete it, folks,
forward to the IT guys, in time
to track this toxic phishing crime.
If you have received an email which you’re not quite sure about, don’t use the links or contact details in the email, forward it to the Suspicious Email Reporting Service (SERS) using report@phishing.gov.uk
My Story
As you can tell from the poem, I have been letting off steam, having had a spate of SCAM emails recently. Very cheerful and heart-felt greetings from around the world addressing me: ‘Hello Lucky Winner, Good Day Dear Friend , Bless You My Dear’ before they get on with the real reason they are communicating with me.
You are a Lottery winner, have an inheritance due to you, can help us with a business investment and receive a share of the profits; and also help distribute money to orphanages in Africa – on behalf of two separate widows. Each correspondent is supposedly dealing with millions of dollars, just waiting for me to benefit from, and the privilege of holding their money in my account before receiving 40% – even 60% of said money. How generous!
After a lengthy spin of the usual story, pulling at your heart strings, one email ended with ‘I remain your sister in Christ, The Lord Be with you. Thanks and Remain Blessed in the Lord.’
How kind. I’m sure God is looking down on me now at the good works I am about to participate in!!! (I know – two writing faux pas – don’t end a sentence on a preposition or use multiple exclamation marks but I feel reckless today.)
I am asked by one fellow who ‘works at the bank’ not to ‘expose or betray this trust and confident’. How could he think I was that sort of person – I have a sister in Christ.
Like buses, not one but two widows turn up in the Spam box: one from the Ivory Coast, the other Burkina Faso. Both widows (mosty likely young men) gave the same sob story of health issues which had prevented them from having children, and they now had terminal cancer. This meant that they were not fit or well enough to cope with the burden of huge inheritances from their recently-deceased husbands. What a dilemma! They wanted to give part of their fortune to good causes – orphanages, to build schools and churches – to be named after their beloved spouses. They needed someone to do the distrbution work on their behalf.
All the emails ended with a request for personal details. One correspondent really took the biscuit with his ‘shopping list’:
Your full name
Your country
Your age
Your occupation
Your phone no
Your office/home address
Copy of your passport.
You wouldn’t would you – share your personal details?
Whoever is spinning these yarns, should consider a career in writing fiction and publish an anthology of their stories. They will need a professional proof reader to iron out their little mistakes, of course. They might not make as much money as they do from successful scamming but at least their story-telling would be appreciated as an art from, and give pleasure, instead of causing pain to their readers.
