I Know It’s Spam, But What Is It?

I know it is spam. Someone wants me, and I assume thousands of others, to answer.

Recently I’ve been getting strange emails like this one:

How longs the flight to get to turks and caicos from miami? I am trying to figure out what is important. I was hoping you might be able to give me some insight.

Any info much appreciated.

Thank you in advance. Gratefully,

Janet

I’ve gotten at least a dozen. Though all are different the overriding style stands out.

It’s always a request with an innocuous question. It’s never within my expertise. It’s never from someone I know. I am never personally addressed in the email. It’s always from a Gmail account.

I know it is spam. Someone wants me, and I assume thousands of others, to answer.

The obvious reason would be to get more email addresses to spam, though that seems unlikely. Spam is sent out in such immense volume that the few they could mine this way would be a tiny percent of the whole&#185–like “pissing in the ocean.”

Have you gotten anything like this? Do you have any idea what’s going on? Inquiring minds want to know.

&#185 – I know this because of all the spam sent out using my domain as a return address which bounces back to me.

One thought on “I Know It’s Spam, But What Is It?”

  1. FYI- I think it’s about a 5 hour flight. This is an attempt to engage the spamee in a personal fake conversation, leading to a fake sob story, leading you to wire this person money to get to his/her mother’s fake funeral or to their fake safe deposit box in T&C (of which they will promise to share you the contents therein. It is clever, a more subtle intro to a scam. (no more all caps, no more claims to royal heritage) It would be a service, Geoff, to warn the vulnerable but unfortunately it is hard to warn the vulnerable.

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