Dollars and Gadgets : I Have Won it All!

by Yayaati Joshi

[box]Yayaati Joshi faces the same troubles with his mail box like most of us – spam mails that announce him as a winner of everything from millions of dollars to plethora of enticing gadgets. Initially having been misled smartly into reading them, he has now learnt a bit more than just ignoring such mails. He now knows how to have his share of perverted fun – a happy beginning indeed to addressing spamming troubles! Read on, you are sure to smile away.[/box]

One of the disadvantages of an online identity on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and the blog is that I am spammed with emails in such unmanageable proportions that I wonder if my email was created with the sole purpose of getting bombarded with spam mails. There are so many things that I’ve “won” – electronic gadgets, pearls, hard cash, among others – that if I were to set up a gadget room of my own, it would attract the envy of the richest of men.

The mails that I get are usually so cleverly worded that it used to be nearly impossible to ignore them. Now I have a keen understanding of spam mails and can figure them by the very subject of the mail. But there was a time when I was not as well trained as now, and would end up wasting some time on the rubbish mails. The subject lines of such mails are often quite catchy: “Important Notice: Do not ignore”, or “Open attachment to collect iPhone”. But the ones that I detest the most are those that appear to be too arrogant (there’s some irony there): “Do not read if you don’t want 5000000 dollars”. That’s what sets my pulse racing. This is some kind of reverse reinforcement, a very smart (but annoying) trick to make you at least read the mail. I can see some very orthodox sales pipeline methodology used there by first spamming a few ‘leads’ with mails, and then expecting some of them (let’s say about 5%) to convert to ‘prospects’ and then eventually of the 5%, some 0.5-1% conversion into actual ‘customers’. What the naïve responders to the mail are not aware of is this: most of these mails that promise free gadgets, or offer millions of pounds of money, are actually scammers. The scammers rely on some antiquated (yet effective) con tricks by which people get suckered into believing them and consequently, even giving them some sensitive data like a bank account number or worse still, a credit card number. But that’s the alarming part of the situation. There’s some fun to it too, especially when you play their conniving game with them. I’ll explain how.

Before the ‘Do not disturb’ service was activated on my phone number, I used to receive frequent calls from credit card companies, banks, job consultancies (not to mention the messages galore that filled my inbox). Fed up of the phone calls, once I actually asked the cold caller some information about what he was selling (in this case a credit card). I asked him for the Annual Percentage Rate. Surprised, (not sure at what – the fact that I asked that question or the fact that I allowed the call to go on for more than 15 seconds), he offered to transfer my call to another department which dealt with “special queries”. But to my dismay, the “special queries” department was busy attending other, more special queries—that’s what I could surmise, after being put on hold for over five minutes. I would love to rant about how companies should train cold callers to have some solid product information before they pick up the receiver, but that’s not the point. The point is that asking for more information puts these cold callers in a difficult spot; most of them are not well versed with what they ‘sell’. The fellas who send spam mails are no different.

The last time I had my dose of perverted fun was when a “sweet, innocent girl from Nigeria (who prays to God that He shower His blessings on me)” contacted me to tell me that she had been “bestowed” with wealth but due to some ritual she had to share half the money with a stranger. Normally, I would have deleted the mail, but this was me at my cheeky best, so I decided to reply. I asked her to send me some more information. Like the servile attendant who at once jumps when he sees the prospect of a tip, she replied within five minutes, thanking me for a couple of paragraphs and explaining how both of us have done the right thing by agreeing to share the money. But then she got to the heart of the matter. Attached with the mail was a form, which had to be filled with my bank details. It was my turn now. I replied saying that I needed to see a photograph of the “sweet, innocent girl fromNigeria”. I further added that after I’ve received the money, I might be inclined to make a trip toNigeria and meet her, so she should send me her address. With that, I guess I had rubbed it at the right place. I didn’t get mails from “her” anymore. I even followed up on that mail, telling her (or whoever it was) that I was desperately waiting for my Nigerian friend to reply, but alas, apparently, something I did had made my new-found friend upset. Thus ended my engagement (yes, it’s a cheap pun) with the spammer. I realised that the back and forth mail exchanges served no purpose. Rather, it was a waste of my own time. I have decided that henceforth, only solicited mails will be read—and any advertising/promotion/spamming/scamming campaign mails will be sent to the trash, without much time being wasted on it.

Will the mails stop now? Of course not! I will continue to win gadgets and goodies, and cash with so many zeros that it will become impossible at a cursory glance to determine whether the number is a million or a billion. But the fun I had in dealing with the cold-caller and the Nigerian “friend” was not dissatisfying after all!

Yayaati Joshi is a man with simple tastes and intense beliefs. Contrary to the bling associated with the capital city, he prefers the company of close friends, an engaging book or an Alfred Hitchcock movie. His placid demeanour is often mistaken for reticence; Yayaati is a self- proclaimed loner, whose recent pursuits include his foray as a budding writer. Yayaati blogs at http://rantingsofadelusionalmind.wordpress.com

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