Scam Fail

This post is either a rant or a public service. Possibly both. 

Today this scam appeared in my in-box:

How do I know it's a scam? Let me count the ways.

1. "This message is from the Office of the Century21 tech support Center to all Century21 account owners." Century21 is a real estate company, not an internet provider. I am not involved whatsoever with this company, so I doggone sure don't have an account with them.

2. "This is to enable us increase security level in all Century21 account to block spam mails for your convenience." One sentence with two errors (using singular when plural is needed) offends my former English teacher self. If someone is going to scam me, he ought to employ standard English usage.

3. "This Maintenance commenced on January 7th to end January 30th 2013 beginning at 9:00 p.m. until approximately 12:00 midnight to enable us increase the storage size of your webmail account." Uh, wrong use of capital letter, lack of commas to separate year from day, and—here's the biggie—it's now February 22, 2013. Apparently someone sent this spam three weeks too late.

4. "Be informed also that we will not hesitate to delete your email account if not functioning to create more space for new users." What does this sentence mean? That my account—which I do not have with a realty company—should be functioning to create more space? Or I should be functioning? What?

5. "Confirm Your email account Details by clicking on the reply button and follow by your;" Oh, dear—two capitalization errors and a punctuation error. Scammer, must I refer you to this site to help you with correct semicolon usage? 

6. Scammer, you want all that info, including my date of birth? You are so not getting it.

7. "Please understand that this is a security measure intended to help protect your email Account." Liar, liar, pants on fire!

8. "Tech support Center
Warning Code :ID64623821" Shouldn't you have an actual name—even a fake one? And a Warning Code? What's with that?

9. The email addy this was sent from and the reply to addy don't match. Shouldn't they also have the name of the actual company? Diginet.ie, a wireless satellite broadband company, is based in Ireland. Googling the reply addy revealed a lot of sites that expose this scam.

Anyhow, faithful blog readers, if you get one of these emails, don't be fooled into giving up your info.

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