Yesterday, an email yesterday with a lead-in very similar to the following one made it past my spam filter. (I've changed all of the details to protect the innocent but it's true to the style and effect.):
From: Mr. John Richard <presidentialdirection@yahoo.com> Subject: NIGERIA PARTNER Dear Sir, This email may come as a suprise to you but I am very glad to make your acquaintance.
To my surprise (and probably to yours as well) this email was not a 419 scam. It turns out, John is from Nigeria and he really wanted to be a partner on a Free Software project I'm working on! I was glad I read the whole message before hitting delete!
I think this is interesting case for two reasons:
First, I can't help but think that had I not had been using a machine spam filter, I would have deleted this in a heartbeat. This is a rare example of a mail that could be correctly identified by many (most?) computer spam filters using techniques like Bayesian analysis on the complete message but incorrectly by human filters who make a decision based on the headers and the first paragraph.
Second, it made me think about the impact that these 419 scams must be having on legitimate Nigerian mail. I've heard it said that most 419's were, at least historically, are actually run by Nigerians although I don't know if this is still the case. In any case, it seems that many people have come to associate Nigeria and Nigerian email writing styles as indicative of scams.
It seems possible that Nigerian Internet cafes are full of emailers with names like Mr. John Richard who use yahoo email addresses and who come from a culture where it is common to write subjects in ALLCAPS. When they write to people they don't know, they -- quite sensibly -- start mails apologizing for the fact that they may have surprised their readers with an unannounced missive. Spammers and scammers put all these more upstanding folks at a real disadvantage when it comes to getting their message out.
Responses to This Post
Have a great day!
your acquaintance" is most likely some scam. Has got nothing to do with Nigeria. Real proposals will look like they have been written by real people.
For years now I have been consciously aware that if you use certain phrases, my messages will likely be labeled spam by an overzealous heuristic scanner, so I take care to use the right words and phrases.
If the habits of writing subjects in caps and apologizing for unsolicited mails are indeed common to the culture, their prominence in Nigerian scams is not planned but only an earmark that the mail was actually written by a Nigerian. I expect American scam letters bear American marks to other cultures.
Netiquette is not as universal as you seem to imply. Within the highly technical communities that I participate in, sending HTML mail is a serious faux-paux as is unwrapped lines or a longer than six-line signature. Setting a Reply-To to the list on a mailing list is considered very bad form. In other online communities, any of these would be acceptable -- even the norm.
The way that Koreans speak to each other online is markedly different than, say, Americans and this translates into English conversations. I don't think John was violating netiquette. I think he was going out of his way to be polite in the way that his culture has taught him. The only real problem is that the rest of the world has come to see this type of Nigerian politeness as indicative of spamming.
I even go one mail saying that i got some kind of heritage ! But i guess its kind of difficult to have your spam filter detect all potential spams , there are bound to have a couple which eventually do get inside your mail box.
cheers,
Javed Mandary
http://javedmandary.blogspot.com
This is a very common scam, I have seen many of them myself. Somewhere down the line he's going to ask you for money. Don't get sucked in, keep away from this guy.
Just delete the e-mail.
Was the mail sent to you, or is your address in the BCC field. If you can't see evidence that this isn't a mass mail, one point against.
I don't mean to knock you, but why you? If he can't give you specific info that is believable, one point against.
Sooner or later he will ask you for money of some sort, considering details given it might be for 'equipment' or he miht ask you to send expensive stuff out to him.
A sure fire test to see if this is genuine, set up a mail account with false details, you might chose a silly name. If he doesn't twig, then you have a scam because he sent this out to so many people he can't track who the hell is replying and he really doesn't care. If he does, play it by ear and wait for him to ask for money. There is no doubt that Christmas and your birthday come only once a year each, and strangers never give you worthwhile gifts.