Foreign Spam is Delicious!

For the last few months, I've been the recipient of an amazing amount of spam (also known as unsolicited bulk e-mail (UBE)) to my Yahoo! email. The majority of this spam appears to come from foreign countries in Africa, the Middle East, and even a few who purport to be from parts of Great Britain. Naturally, the spam letters could be from anywhere, though I would like to think that American spammers are creative enough to come up with this particular type of spam. It used to be that I would receive just a handful of these a year, now for some reason, I'm receiving a few weekly. Just for the fun of it, I decided to do a little basic research on spam.

• A synonym for spam is unsolicited bulk e-mail (UBE).
• Another synonym, "UCE" refers specifically to unsolicited commercial e-mail, or spam purporting to sell a product to the reader.
• The daily volume of spam reached over 100 billion emails per day as of April 2008.
• 80% of all spam is sent by less than 200 spammers.
• Botnets, networks of virus-infected computers, are used to send about 80% of spam.
• E-mail addresses utilized by spammers are collected from chatrooms, websites, newsgroups, and viruses which harvest users' address books, and are sold to other spammers. So it's extremely important to control where you use your email address online.
• Spam averages 94% of all e-mail sent. I believe it because my friends continuously send me stupid forwardings even though I ask them time and time again not to. If you only have a few dozen people you email then it may not be a big deal, but when like me you have hundreds of email partners, it gets to be a bit much.
  
• Researchers say responding to opt-out requests is unwise, as this confirms to the spammer that yours is an active e-mail account.

In any case, the majority of my spam letters are referred to as advance-fee fraud which is a confidence trick in which the target is persuaded to advance sums of money in the hope of realizing a significantly larger gain. Other names for this spam are 419 fraud, Nigerian letters, Russian/Ukrainian letters, etc. It's just disturbing because all of the letters start out pretty much the same way: "My dear friend, my name is so-and-so. I have come into the inheritance of $50,000,000.00 in my home country of tree-palms. Because of laws in this country I cannot claim my inheritance without your benevolence. Would you please send me your bank account number? I will deposit the entire sum in your bank, and then for your help after it is safely in your account, you may keep $??,000,000.00 as a gift of thanks for me. I am forever in your care. bla bla bla." This time, instead of just talking about my spam offerings, I figured I would share a real spam letter with you guys.

From: Ali Ibrahim ,
Sent: Wednesday, May 6, 2009 4:09:51 AM
Subject: From: Dr. Ali Ibrahim

From: Dr. Ali Ibrahim
Dear Friend,

I have a proposal for you, this however is not mandatory nor will I in any mannercompel you to honour the content against your will. I am Dr. Ali Ibrahim, I work with a bank (one of the leading banks in Africa). Here in this bank exists a dormant account for the past 8 years which belongs to an American national who is now late, Mr. John Cuthbertson, who died on

Alaska Airlines on Alaska Airline Flight 261 in January 31, 2000.

When I discovered that there had been no deposits or withdrawals from this account for this long period, I decided to carry out a system investigation and discovered that none of the family members nor relations of the late person is aware of this account. Now I want an account overseas where the bank will transfer this fund.

Thereafter, I will destroy all related documents to this account. It is a careful network and for the past eleven months I have worked out everything to ensure a hitch-free operation. The amount plus all the accumulated interest is US$15,500,000.00 (Fifteen million, Five hundred thousand US Dollars only).

Now my questions are: -
1. Can you handle this project?
2. Can I give you this trust?
3. What will be your commission if you can facilitate the movement of this fund to your account?

Consider these and get back to me as soon as possible with your full names, private telephone and fax numbers, corresponding postal address, etc. Finally, it is my humble request that the information as contained herein be accorded with every confidentiality and the necessary secrecy it deserves I expect your urgent response to this request, via my private email

Respectfully yours,
Yours Sincerely,
Dr. Ali Ibrahim