I stumbled onto this site the other day which suggested ways to have fun with those annoying email scammers. I seem to get one or two of them in my email a week so I thought I'd give it a try with my own little sense for flare on the whole idea of messing with them. I got two of them through today. The first one is from some man, claiming to be a girl wanting to "tell me something important".

From: hassa10nababy@katamail.com
Reply-to: hassanababy@gmx.com
Date: 16/02/2010 8:15 PM
To: My email
Subject: Hello,

Hello,
How are you? hope fine, I Want to introduce my self to you before I go further, My Name is Hassana lsaac. I will like to have a good relationship with you, if you wouldn't mind, I will like to hear from you soon through this email address (hassanababy@gmx.com) because, I have something very important I will like to tell you. Thanks and God bless you,
Miss Hassana lsaac.

I thought for a moment of doing my usual rutine of simply clicking the junk mail button and never having to hear from "Miss lsaac" again. But then I thought again and decided to mess with "her". First I replied to the email address she sent this from (the one she didn't want me to reply to) saying simply "Hi, how are you?". I though I can certainly do better than that, so I then emailed the address she DID want me to email to (hassanababy@gmx.com) with the following reply.

From: My email
Date: 17/02/2010 2:27 PM
To: hassanababy@gmx.com
Subject: RE: Hello,

Hi Glenda,

It's nice to hear from you, it's been awhile. What happened with that gentile warts problem? I hope it's all cleared up now, or is that the important thing you wanted to talk to me about? It's weird that you've turned into a Christian, I always thought you were a committed satanist. I should let you know we're having a sacrifice next week, you should come along. It's a nun this time, it'll be great.

Looking forward to hearing for you,

Peter

I'm awaiting "her" reply and I'll update you when it comes through. lol

It's important to note that when ever I sign up for things online which I think will give me spam, or indeed I reply to a scammer/spammer I use the name peter. This helps to distance me so no spammers or scammers know my name or details. This will become apparent in the email from the next scammer which I received a few hours later.

From: Paul_Meyers@mytopdealbrands.com
Date: 17/02/2010 2:47PM
To: My email
Subject: Partner with an online guru Peter

Hi Peter

My Name is Paul and I’m an internet professional. For almost 10 years now I have been working in
online advertising and last I will show you verified proof of how I made $136,808 in a single month.

Over the years I’ve seen it all, from the top opportunities on the web to the absolute scams. I’ve helped
my good friend Mike to make money online and now I’m going to help you. Truth is I’m no saint, I need
your help just as much as you need mine.

I’m not here to fill your head with false promises about myself or what you can achieve. Let me show you how.

Click here to learn more:
[insert stupid spam link]

Noting how well I figured the last email had gone I figured I should try something similar on this guy.

To: Paul_Meyers@mytopdealbrands.com
Date: 17/02/2010 3:01 PM
From: My email
Subject: RE: Partner with an online guru Peter

Hi James,

It's great to hear from you. It's been what 2 months since you emailed me last? How is Nancy and the kids? Well I hope. It's been awhile since I've spoken to Mike, tell him I said 'hi' and ask him if he ever found out which one of the prostitutes he was banging gave him Venereal Disease?

It's great to see your new job manually picking leeches off the rare and engaged Swap Camel has netted you so much revenue in the last month. Sadly I must tell you that the life of a Camel Leecher isn't for me, I'd miss the city far to much. Anyways it was great to hear from you james. I hope to hear from you again soon. All my love to Nancy and the kids

Peter.

I like the idea of purposely getting their name wrong, because when they reply it lets me know in the first sentence whether or not they're a real person or a robot. IF they're a real life person they'll correct their name and the rest of the details in my reply. If it's a robot it'll go on telling me a bunch of non-sense. Of course if it's a robot it'll end up straight in my junk mail pile. If it's a real person however I'm going to have lots of fun playing with them. I'll be sure to continue to post the fun I have with scammers into my blog for you all to read.

The other brilliant thing about posting this up is that I've included their email addresses. By doing so all the email address collection bots that spammers and scammers deploy across the internet will collect their addressed from my posts and end up spamming and scamming them. lmao. I've also decided to produce a new page on TJandSarah.com where you can enter in the email addresses spammers and scammers use to contact you. But instead of creating a black list like most people would I figure I can make this list HIGHLY visible to spammers sniffing for email addresses. In this way it's likely that they'll end up spamming themselves as well as all their other colleges

Sure it won't fix the spam problem, but it'll certainly be a laugh knowing their spamming themselves. Keep checking back on TJandSarah.com for updates on when the list will go live.

The data coming out of the United States is showing the economy is beginning to improve, but what does this mean for the average joe? The unemployment rate is showing it's first real signs of beginning to fall, which I can only assume means it's becoming easier to find a job in America. I have no doubts however that there are still a lot of people hurting financially having lost everything.

I find it appalling under those circumstances that the board members of banks and financial institutions who caused this whole mess, the same group of companies that the US government had to bail out in the the order of trillions, received bonuses at the end of 2009. Bonuses for what exactly; crippling the global economy and causing financial distress to billions and causing millions to become homeless? It's moments like these that make government regulation of financial services sound like a good idea.

None the less there are signs of hope on the horizon. Things are improving, and regardless of the distress and pain being caused now, and the loss of the past, the future looks bright. Now is when things can really start to be rebuilt for the individual. With work comes hope and the promise of a better tomorrow. We can only hope.

It seems in todays world just to get your foot in the do for a job interview you must have a university degree; in fact as your career progresses you're expected to constantly be upgrading your skills. The problem is how do you keep your full time job and yet manage to go to university so that you have the desired skills for that big promotion you're hoping for?

Enter the age of the online university, were you can continue your studies online regardless where in the world you are. And these aren't some fly by night institutions either, in fact some of the biggest universities on the planet have realised the power of the internet and offer their courses online. In Australia the most well respected universities have joined forces even to offer a university program called "Open University".

Not only is this of benefit to those already in the work force looking to up skill, but also to those who live in rural regions and thus would otherwise not have access to universities. People like farmers are now able to access higher learning courses which benefit both the farming business they run and the environment they utilise (through better farming methods) to carry out their farming business. Even I am considering doing another degree through online university, this time in journalism.

Of course there are however certain courses which due to practical reasons can not be done by online university, like for example "med school". But there is certainly no denying the fact that online universities are certainly a very positive part of the community.

Links;

Online Degree
Open University