We all receive Spam and Phishing messages by E-mail. Although there are some services that can help lessen or eliminate it, in my position they would form a barrier between me and some of the business I do, so I have to put up with some. I do have server-side filters in place that catch about 95% of it, and other filters on my side that catch most of the rest, but every now and then something gets through. Most of what I have to deal with are requests to place advertisements in my print newspaper, which has not been in print for years. But every now and then I get a coffee-related message that gets through, and while most are worth less than the effort it takes to hit the DELETE key, I just received one today that is funny enough to share. Let's get right to it:

      Even if you are not a coffee person, one of the first clues that this is a suspicious message is the very poor English, spelling errors, and lack of proper sentence structure and punctuation.

      The next is that the message's E-Mail return was not from a Company (like: me@xerox.com) but from a generic ISP's server.

      Even if it were a genuine company address (such as me@marryandsons.com) Thre is no such company that can be found by the name of Merry and Sons Enterprice Limited. Not even Marry and Sons Enterprise Ltd. Not even Mary and Sons Enterprise Ltd.

      We can also consider that it is quite clear that I am not a coffee business and I do not sell anything, and the Pasquini Livia 90, up until here and now in this chapter, is not mentioned anywhere on my website.

      Finally, the Pasquini Livia 90 does not come in sizes. It is available as a single-group machine, and that is all.

      So my reply was:

      The plot thickens. once again there are numerous grammar and punctuiation errors, but the notable problems lie in the fact that, once again, the Pasquini Livia 90 only comes in one size and one color- a single group machine in stainless, at least as far as I know. it certainly does NOT come in "Large," nor is it available in "white." Finally, the request I made for contact information in my first reply was totally ignored. So I have to send yet another reply:

      So once again, I reply, this time with:

Marry's reply to that never arrived... how sad.

In all seriousness, this sort of baiting a Phisher has its risks and should be done cautiously. Many of these sorts of scams originate from Nigeria or Russia and are put together by some very bad people. Some of them have resorted to murder... literally. Notice that I did not offer any money nor request any goods or money. Depending on the offer, doing so could be considered a crime. In the case above, it was quite clear to me that a scam was being perpetrated, and not a very sophisticated one at that. I am sure that If I had said I could supply the machines, I would have heard that, "The money order is in the mail..."