Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Why scammers should pay attention in school

Most of the email providers have put into place junk mail filters to keep the worst of the obvious attempts at scamming out of your in box. Hotmail, however, seems to have missed one area. If an email has Hotmail in its subject line they somehow let it through, legitimate or not. Sometimes Hotmail does send its users informational alerts. How can you tell which ones are legit and which ones aren't? Okay, the email address is one obvious place to look--Hotmail doesn't use readmylips5938 at Yahoo to send official mail from. But it's the English that is a dead giveaway.

This morning's scam began its message "Due to the congestion in hotmail users." Now granted I really do have a cold, I'm congested and I'm a hotmail user, but my physical problems should in no way be a reason to send someone my personal password information. And that opening sentence was only one of many, many English usage errors.

If the grammar and usage on a purportedly official email make you blink it's time to hit delete.

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