The upside of being scammed :: Special Kind of Stupid

November 18, 2009

My mind is incredibly random.

One moment I’m sitting at my desk in my office doing some work. The next moment I’m pondering the possibility of still being single a decade from now. The next moment I’m debating whether or not to let the ant crawling on my desk live. And the next moment I’m reading a ridiculous junk e-mail and thinking of sarcastic remarks I could make at the writer’s expense.

Wait, I should back up.

When I started writing conservative political articles for Examiner a few weeks back, at first I included my e-mail address in my bio.

It made sense at the time.

If people liked what they read, they could write me and tell me so.

If people hated what they read, they could e-mail me and I could make fun of what they said here on my blog.

It was win-win.

However, I had forgotten about the dangers of having your e-mail address displayed in text on the Internet. Spiders, crawlers or whatever they call it these days grab these addresses. Next thing you know you’re on spam e-mail lists getting all sorts of crap delivered to your inbox day after day.

I modified my bio to minimize the damage, but it was too late. I’m on lists. I receive between 2 and 5 e-mails a day that try to scam me into revealing my checking account information.

Not sure what I mean? Here’s an example:

My dear,

When my late husband was alive he deposited the sum of Eleven Million united states dollars (11,000,000.00) USD in a Commercial Bank here in the federal republic of COTE D’IVOIRE. Recently,I was confirmed to be suffering from Cancer and the Doctors informed me that i will not last for the next two months.

They’re pretty much all like this one.

Each is written by someone who’s first language isn’t English. Each has some convoluted reason for why they’re offering me the chance to get my hands on millions of dollars. Each seems to call me “dear” at some point.

Silly scammers.

If calling me “dear” was all it took to get me to give up my banking info, my grandmother would have raided my account and been swimming in twenty dollar bills years ago.

Still, reading these ridiculous e-mails brings back memories.

Memories of a time where I would deliberately bait people into trying to scam me so I could cripple them with my quick, sarcastic wit.

Once upon a time, America Online (or “AOL” as the cool kids called it) ruled the web. Never mind the fact it sometimes took up to twenty-five minutes to sign on using a dial-up connection, AOL was the bee’s knees.

I was a crazy college kid. It’s what we crazy college kids did back then.

Instant Messaging, or IMs, was how I spent most of my time on AOL.

It’s thanks to IMs that I learned to type fast. I went from 5 words a minute to 60 in just a few months.

IMs are also to thank for my (mostly) good use of grammar. I quickly realized on AOL that the only ways to differentiate between smart people and morons were typing fast and typing well.

If you were slow and had lots of typos, you were an idiot.

If you were fast, spelled properly and used punctuation, you were Albert Einstein.

Of course, Instant Messaging on AOL back in the day had its dangers.

There were AOL thugs who had programs called “punters” that could knock you offline. It would send you IM after IM that said something lame like “You have just been ICED by the Punter Ice Machine 2.0!”

The never-ending barrage of IMs would freeze up your computer. The only way to make the insanity end was to sign off from AOL. It sounds like an easy solution, but remember: It sometimes took half an hour to sign back on.

“Why would anyone punt you offline,” you ask?

Well, to be mean.

Of course, so long as you didn’t enter any of the random AOL “chat rooms” and make enemies, AOL users who owned these punting programs would never know you even existed. You’d be free to live in peace.

Unfortunately, I was a trouble maker.

I would join random chat rooms on AOL, but I wouldn’t participate.

What’s the point?

I was waiting for someone to IM me.

No, I wasn’t lonely.

I was baiting people.

I was waiting for someone to IM me asking me for my AOL password.

I was waiting for someome to IM me making fun of my screenname.

In short, I was just waiting for someone I could have some fun with.

(Yes I was bored. Wasn’t that clear?)

It wouldn’t take long before someone would IM me pretending to work for AOL.

I’d play along, of course.

Sometimes I’d play dumb and make them try for 20+ minutes to convince me they really worked for AOL. Sometimes I would turn the tables and tell them I worked for AOL; that I was an undercover agent. Sometimes I would pretend I was a small child; they’d be asking for my “mommy’s password” and I’d be asking them to read me a story.

My tactic was always different, but the outcome was always the same.

I’d drive these guys crazy.

Gosh, I miss that.

Today, I read these ridiculous e-mails that promise millions of dollars will be transferred to my checking account and I think, “I wish I could interact with this idiot.”

Of course, since e-mailing them back would surely put me on even MORE spam lists, I will instead call them out here on SKOS.

I encourage the owners of the following spam addresses…