Mr Daz

We’ve all had spam emails in the past, some of us receive hundreds of the damn things each day. They’re usually very easy to spot, some more so than others. However they still get sent because generally, there are still people who fall for them.

I just received this prize winning notification email, which could be described as a classic, but I wonder if the spammers are really trying anymore.

—–Original Message—–
From: Mrs. Becky Owen [mailto:info_europeanlotterycompanydavid@yahoo.com.hk]
Sent: 06 May 2008 10:36
To: undisclosed-recipients:
Subject: [SPAM?]: REF: WE67/4360/34

EUROPEAN PRIZE AWARD DEPT
1 Plough Place,
London EC4A 1DE
UNITED KINGDOM
REF: WE67/4360/34
BATCH: 11/4578/GN

OK, so far so good. The email claims to be originating from London and there’s even an address. But wait, the email address is .hk… what’s that about?

Attn:Sir/Madam.

Top of days greetings to you.Finally today, we announce that you are one of the winners of the ELECTRONIC LOTTERY PROGRAMS.

held on 6th MAY,2008. Your company and your personal
e-mail addresses, attached to ticket number: 7-1-8-36-4-22 under agent ID: 18 and lucky ball number 7363789,which consequently won in the Tenth lottery category.

My email address and my company? I don’t have a company… I’m getting suspicious.

You have therefore been awarded a lump sum pay out of 860,641.28 Great British Pounds(GBP) which amounts to $1,500,000.00 (One Million,Five Hundred Thousand United States DOLLARS).

Now, why would they tell me the amount in US Dollars? The email is supposedly from a UK address in London, I’m based in the UK… so why mention US Dollars? I’ll tell you why, because the kind of people who usually fall for these scams are based in the USA, they’re Americans.

Americans are the most gullible race on the planet, particularly when they think there’s some sort of financial gain heading their way.

The online draws was conducted by a random selection of email addresses from an exclusive list of 29,031 E-mail addresses of individuals and corporate bodies picked by an advanced automated random computer search from the internet. No ticket were sold but all email addresses were assigned to different ticket numbers for representation and privacy. This is to encourage our prominent and consistent Microsoft Internet Explorer users all over the world, and for the Continues use of E-mail.

Whoooaaah there! Internet Explorer users??? Now I know it’s a load of shite. I haven’t used IE for years, it’s an awful browser full of security holes. It is used by Americans quite a bit though. Notice a recurring theme?

Your fund has been insured with your identification number {CPEL/OWN/9876}. To claim your winning prize, you must first contact the claims department by email for Processing and remittance of your prize to you.
***********************************
Mr. Mark David
Executive Secretary,
TEL:+447 045 740 589
+447 024 098 309
EMAIL:info_europeanlotterycompanymark2@yahoo.com.hk
**********************************
Do email the above email address all at once. In order to avoid unnecessary delays and complications, please remember to quote your reference and winning numbers in all correspondences with your claims officer.

You are to keep all lotto information away from the general public especially your ticket number and ballot number.All your personal datas are to be sent to YAHOO/MICROSOFT ACCREDITED AGENT via email for the processing of your winning.

‘personal datas’? ‘processing of your winning’? The grammar is really starting to break up. Evidently the author of this scam doesn’t use English as a first language.

FILL THE FORM BELOW WITH YOUR DATAS.

1.Full Name:____________________ 2.Address:______________________ 3.Nationality:____________________
4.Age:______________________________
5.Occupation:____________________ 6.Phone:________________________ 7.State of Origin:_________________ 8.Country:______________________ Sincerely, Mrs. Becky Owen Online Co-ordinator Secretary ====================================================

Again, if they’re in the UK, I’m in the UK, we’re all in the UK together… why ask for my STATE OF ORIGIN??? We don’t have States in the UK.

OUR Executives:
Dr. P. Swier (CEO), Mr. Gerald Goodman (Manager
Foreign Operations), Mr. Franklyn Van Der Weijden
(Manager Domestic Banking Operations), Dr. James
Williams (Director International Credit Department),
Mrs. Lonni K Anderson (Legal Representative), Mrs.
Lyudmyla Marchukova(Regional Manager), Mr. Stephen
Boer (Chairman), Mr. Chris Moritz(International
Relation Officer).

And they print out a list of impressive sounding names to give the scam credence. That’s me sold, have my bank details so you can send me the monies without delay.

Seriously, if you’re an Internet scammer, please at least try to make an effort with your emails. It’ll make all of the difference.

Tags: Internet // 1 Comment »

I just received a refusal from the advertising network Textlink-ads.com for one of my websites. This came as something of an annoyance to me, rather than a surprise, because the site itself is one of the newest of my portfolio, but one of the fastest growing.

The traffic on the website is very good, slightly below MrDaz.com presently, but should eclipse this site in the next month. However, as I said it is new. Which means it doesn’t have any Netcraft data, it doesn’t have any Google PageRank and it doesn’t have any history.

All of the useless stuff that pointless networks take into consideration when deciding whether they’ll take on a website or not.

Textlink-Ads said:

Hello Darren,

Unfortunately, at this time we feel that your site http://www.*******.com, does not meet our internal requirements to be accepted into the InLinks publishing program. We recommend that you continue marketing your website and generate a significant more amount of traffic to your site. Once you feel you have strong enough traffic — this normally takes a few months at least — you can feel free to contact us back and we will be happy to revisit the opportunity to work with you.

I was a bit annoyed and replied straight away with:

You probably shouldn’t base your decisions on Google PageRank.

Just a hint.

As a consequence I won’t be using Textlink-Ads on the site even when they consider it to have met their ‘internal requirements’. I offered them the chance and they refused, their loss.

It’s frustrating but as I say, they’re the ones who will miss out.

Tags: Affiliate Marketing, Internet, Rants // Add Comment »

You may remember when my car was stolen from the Hillcroft garage in Langstone, Newport, I put up a post calling the garage ‘thieving gypsy bastards‘. It was a comical post highlighting my anger at the garage and how my car was stolen from them, with the keys, and their ‘end of year accounts’, making the whole thing look very suspicious.

Very suspicious indeed.

Well, I’ve now had a complaint for my use of the term ‘thieving gypsy bastards’, from the Thames Valley Gypsy Association. The complaint reads:

From: Joseph G. Jones [info@gypsy-association.com]
Subject: Unpleasant remark

Please remove the term “Thieving gypsy bastards” from your website, as a community we find the term offensive.

If you wish to call the garage names feel free, but please leave us out of it.

Besides which it makes you seem like a racist.

Reagrds

Joseph G. Jones
Thames Valley Gypsy Association

Joseph found my website because I rank on the first page of Google for the term ‘Thieving Gypsy Bastards’. This site tends to rank for most phrases it uses, and will no doubt rank again for the term for this particular blog post.

However, as you can see while the original post does rank for ‘thieving gypsy bastards’ it doesn’t actually have a go at gypsies at all. It’s referencing the garage and the fact that my car was stolen from there. If I were to remove the post, my site would no longer rank for the term and more, anti-gypsy posts would rank in Google in its place.

Therefor, my post being there is helping.

Plus, the term ‘thieving gypsy bastards’ doesn’t reference gypsies at all, it’s a reference to a comic strip in Viz, which is infamous and even has its own Wikipedia page. An extract from the page reads:

The comic got in trouble with the United Nations after featuring a strip called ‘The Thieving Gypsy Bastards’; unbeknownst to the Viz editorial team at the time, Gypsies are regarded as a race under UK law and thus the comic was guilty of racism. During the resultant court case, UK newspaper The Sun ran a story revealing that the principal Roma man who initiated the action against them was in fact also being tried for, and was later found guilty of, handling stolen property.

Hilarious!

Tags: Humour, Rants, Stolen Car // Add Comment »

While out this bank holiday Monday I was disgusted to see bespectacled nerds lording it around with attractive women, as if they were normal people, like the rest of us.

What sort of breeding stock are they? They can’t even see straight for fuck’s sake. It would benefit humanity if people with glasses were neutered so they couldn’t procreate, leaving the rest of us normal, able bodied people to live free of their goggle eyed interference.

I’m not saying this out of anger, I just feel the human race would benefit without the constant adverts for Specsavers and other such bollocks.

Neuter the glasses wearing community, make Britain a better sighted place to live.