In God We Trust

I am always impressed and depressed when I read about the phishing, spam, malware and spoofing hi-tech hi jinks that goes on out here in cyberspace. My favorites are the ones that purport to be from some form of a middle level US Army officer, usually, in Iraq, with a back story right out of Three Kings.

I'm supposed to believe this Captain or Major (names are over rated, except mine) is sitting on millions of dollars (I always call it 'war booty' because I'm a swashbuckling scalawag at heart and I enjoy the vaguely suggestive image the phrase creates to fructify my fantasy) and I'm the guy he's picked to help him move this abandoned treasure under the radar and into the country.

Yeah. My wife barely lets me touch our checkbook because I'm Houdini in terms of making balances disappear and I know where all the hidey-holes are in the US banking system? (Hint: NOT at JP Morgan). Almost all of this email cascades into my work email all day long, nearly unseen. It gets funneled to my junk mail folder because that's what Microsoft Outlook calls it and there it remains until I go to click on it and delete it. But first, I think, a quick look for one the way....

The mail is so formulaic, be it from the Captain Courageous or somebody's Minister of Underwater Softball and Watercress Sandwiches or the dying-of-consumption widow of some relative you actually don't believe is yours, after a while you wonder how anyone can fall for any of it. And yet, everyday there are stories about folks being conned for gazillions of dollars in some of the goofiest on-line cons I have ever read about.

Considering all the security and firewalls and other safeguards, I sort of admire the folks who sit in these boiler rooms and create this electronic troll trash, the digital foo, and launch it to a million or more addresses knowing they only need one person to have one moment of hesitation or vacillation and BINGO! they're in.

Because the stakes are so high, for them, if you're like me, you get something like this and become angry at the lack of effort--all this trouble to master the mechanics of the mainframe and your communications in my language is written as if you'd learned English by correspondence course, during a mail strike. Seriously? 
"Peace be with you
Dear one,
I am a window woman with out child recently; my doctor told me that I may not last due to my sickness problem. I want to use my ($2.800.000.00) to provide help to the orphans and schools childrens I will update you when I hear from you.
Yours Sister in Christ
Mrs Esther Nadis"

Esther, my sister, this is the best you can do? The crown of creation and you stick an 's' on the end of  children and do what? Make even more of them? Oh, dear. I suppose cash is out of the question now.
-bill kenny