It’s a scam, so don’t fall for it
For the third time in the past three months, someone has passed along to me a message about a visual journalist stuck at an English hotel.
I’m quite certain it’s a phishing scam. However, none of the three designers or editors spoofed would confirm with me.
The latest arrived today in the in-basket of my good friend Jim McBee. Less than two weeks ago, I was relayed a very similar message — ostensibly from a college student designer — by my other good friend Doug Jessmer. And back in April, I received a similar faux plea from a German journalism teacher.
Here’s the text of the latest scam. I’ll pull the name of the editor — whom I know pretty well — out of the message:
Subject: Help Me Out!!!!!
It is with deep sorrow and broken heart that am sending you this mail. Am in deep need and my situation is lamentable. my family and I decide to come visit Wales, United Kingdom for a short vacation. To our greatest dismay we were attacked and ripped apart at the park of the hotel where we were lodging, all cash, credit cards and mobiles were forcefully robbed off us at gun point but we still have our passports with us.
We’ve seek help at embassy and high commission, the Police too, unfortunately they have been unable to help or offer any reasonable support whatsoever. Our flight leaves in couple of hour from now but we are being held to ransom by the hotel management because we cannot settle the hotel bills. It is clear we would not be allowed to leave until pay the bill. Word cannot explain the anguish in my heart now. I am in need of immediate assistance.
The message ends here — I presume we’re meant to hit “reply” or something. The previous versions of this have included account numbers to which we might wire funds directly from our bank.
Now, there’s no freakin’ way this came from my friend, who currently works as a copy editor. The errors you see above are very much unlike her, as is the syntax. I notice with interest the Yahoo e-mail account is one character off of the one I use for her.
However, I can’t seem to raise her today via e-mail or via Twitter. I’d feel a lot better if she’d at least say ‘hi.’
So anyway, if you get a message like this from someone you know, disregard it. It is interesting that our community — newspaper designers, artists and editors — are being targeted in this way, however. Very interesting indeed.
June 24th, 2010 at 1:46 pm
This is a very common phishing scheme, and I don’t think it’s targeted to visual journalists. More likely than not, your name is associated with a lot of other visual journalists’ names via social networking sites. http://ht.ly/22QPR
June 24th, 2010 at 2:37 pm
Thanks for posting this Charles. I, too, got that e-mail this morning and was feeling really bad that I couldn’t help out… Until now.
June 24th, 2010 at 2:43 pm
It’s not just the visual editor community, Charles - it’s just that a lot of your friends are visual editors. This phishing scam has been going around all over the place for a while. Your friends have either picked up a virus that’s grabbing e-mail addresses from their address book, or if they’re using GMail or Yahoo or another web-mail server, then somebody’s hacked their address book there and is spamming those addresses.
You’re probably not hearing back from your hacked friends because they’re too embarrassed to admit they’ve been hacked. (I would be, too!)
June 24th, 2010 at 2:55 pm
Even if your friend wasn’t a copy editor, this just doesn’t sound like it’s written by someone who speaks English. So many mistakes! Even the folks I know who can’t spell can still put together sentences better than this.
But, thanks for the heads up, regardless.
June 24th, 2010 at 3:42 pm
I got a version of that e-mail from my cousin, whose father is a retired international pilot and she was a stewardess at one point. There’s no way she would be stuck anywhere in this world. What a crock.
June 25th, 2010 at 12:01 am
When I first saw the e-mail, I wondered ‘why me?’ I didn’t know the person well enough to stand up and send money to Britain. And frankly, I’d expect a better plea from someone who’s in this profession.
That said, I will accept any and all contributions even though I’m not marooned overseas. Gift certificates for Domino’s and Pizza Hut are especially welcome.
July 2nd, 2010 at 12:01 pm
This can be one of the most important discussions I ever encountered today, I’m talking about this part of your post “… Wales, United Kingdom for a short vacation. To our greatest dismay we were attacked and ripped apart at the park …” this is it, you just nailed it down pal.
July 2nd, 2010 at 1:00 pm
Programming note: I make it a habit to kick spam out of my blog comments. Especially robot spam.
But the one above was SO horrible and SO inappropriate that it’s actually of great interest — if only for comedic value.
My apologies.