Is this a scam?

[Chronos]

As a general rule: If you ever in your life have to ask yourself “is this a scam”, of anything, the answer is “yes”.

[Mangetout]

@HeyHomie

I e-mailed one of those guys back at his reply-to address, telling him to buzz (I used a different word) off, and the message came back undeliverable.

How do they expect to scam me if they aren’t using working e-mails?

He’ll have been emailing dozens or maybe even thousands of potential marks; if one or two of these reported him to his ISP (and if the ISP is any good), they shut down the account - sometimes scam baiters (people who play games with the scammers) find that the scammer suddenly changes his email address halfway through their communication - probably because of this.

[citrus_x_paradisi]

Nevermind the text of the message, my question is why you even opened it. I don’t know if you access the Dope from home, work, the library, or elsewhere, but no computer deserves to have the plagues of unsolicited e-mails wrought upon it. Perhaps as a computer layman, I’m being paranoid here, but I would suggest sticking to e-mails from those you know.

Thanks.

[Colibri]

@citrus x paradisi

Nevermind the text of the message, my question is why you even opened it. I don’t know if you access the Dope from home, work, the library, or elsewhere, but no computer deserves to have the plagues of unsolicited e-mails wrought upon it. Perhaps as a computer layman, I’m being paranoid here, but I would suggest sticking to e-mails from those you know.

Thanks.

You do realize that many people do receive perfectly legitimate e-mails from people they don’t know, don’t you? I often receive e-mails related to my work from people who have been referred to me by other contacts, or who have are responding to articles by me that include my e-mail address.

That said, it is generally pretty easy to recognize spam and scams just from the subject line. If someone is genuinely e-mailing me about something related to my work, they will usually have something specific enough in the subject line that makes that clear. If it looks like spam, I usully delete it without opening.

[tygerbryght]

@Colibri

You do realize that many people do receive perfectly legitimate e-mails from people they don’t know, don’t you? …

That said, it is generally pretty easy to recognize spam and scams just from the subject line. If someone is genuinely e-mailing me about something related to my work, they will usually have something specific enough in the subject line that makes that clear. If it looks like spam, I usully delete it without opening.

I’m another of those people who receive legitimate email from persons unknown to me. This is why I love MailWasher! With it, you can preview either the message or the (complete) header while it is still on the server. If you don’t want it, you mark that source as spam, and process it. MailWasher not only deletes it from the server; it bounces it back to the sender. Any future messages from the same source will come up marked as spam when MailWasher checkes the server(s). And MailWasher (the version I use, 'cos it does all I need) is free!