It seems like every day I get two or three messages that say: You have won the lottery! Just send us your name, address, social insurance number, and your bank account number ... as well as you mother's maiden name, your date of birth, and your soul to us and we'll give you this totally non-fake prize of several tens of thousands of dollars! What the hell? I know I've seen these emails before ... most of you probably have seen these before too. But why am I getting them every day now? The worst part is that it passes through gmail's spam filter which means it is a daily annoyance to manage the message (rather than just hitting the 'delete all spam' button). So what gives? It isn't like I'm going to give them the information they want so they can steal my money, my identity, and my soul. It hasn't worked yet, and it won't ... so ...

This is similar to the situation when I got a bazillion emails entitled 'good luck!' in short order. Thankfully, gmail recognized that as spam.

This post has gotten pretty rambly, so I'll just wrap it up quickly. I find it scary that these emails continue to be sent because that means that people, somewhere, are falling for these tricks. The success rate is probably not high, but somehow people are dumb enough to believe that they just won the lottery and pass on all these important details. And so I find that truly scary ... and I'm also mad at them because it is them that justify these spammers sending these damn emails to me everyday.

Heraldk