January 21, 2004 October is Koufax Pledge Drive month

Pride In Your Work

Regardless of your field, one of the keys to success is to take pride in your work. If you do not, your lack of pride will show because your work will be slipshod. No one will respect either you or your product if you do not show respect yourself.

It does not matter what endeavor you choose. Doctors, plumbers, policemen and teachers all need to take pride in their work. For instance, if you decide to be an internet con artist, please put some time, thought and effort into making your scam at least slightly plausible. Create a persona as the long lost illegitimate child of a deposed African leader trying to smuggle $40,000,000 worth of jewels out of the country or something. I recently received multiple copies of the following email:

Dear_ OnlineCitibank Member,

This LETTER was seent by the_ _citibank sevrer to veerify your_ _email_ adress_.You must cteplmoe this peroscs by clicking on_the_link_below_ and enttering in the litlle winndow your citibank__ATM_ full card nummber and CARD PIN that you use on Atm machine.

That is done for-your petroction -b- becaurse some of our_members_ no lneogr have accses to their email adedresss and we must verify it.

To veerify your E_MAIL adress and access _your_ CITI_bank account, clik on_the_link below_.


Show a little creativity and pride. It is pretty likely that Citibank can afford to spring for a spell checker so you should, too. If you can not address me by name in the email, at least use my email address in the salutation. Surely you can think up a better excuse than “some of our_members_ no lneogr have accses to their email adedresss and we must verify it.”

These crooks today, they just don't take pride in their work.

Posted by Dwight Meredith at January 21, 2004 05:52 PM | TrackBack
Comments

Hi,
I heard they misspell the words on purpose so that spam catching software does not recognize them. Seems kind of weird, especially since the words are so common that it seems they would not be triggers for spam catching software. But it seems incredible that someone could type a letter with that many typos without there being some element of it on purpose.

Posted by: Anna in Cairo at January 22, 2004 07:51 AM

Anna's right, of course. The underscores are a tip-off. But I think there's another factor at work.

Bad spelling is a way to show that you are normal and sincere. It is an observable fact (and I speak as one who has read a lot of emails from people not employed in the communications trades) that most people can't spell worth a damn. A proofread communication may then be perceived as a professional communication -- which is not the impression you want to leave when you're trying to scam someone.

This may be less probable in an email purporting to come from Citibank. But it may not. Maybe this party runs a lot of different scams, and has observed that bad spelling catches more flies than good.

Of course, the crook may just be a poor speller himself. It makes sense. How many armed-robbery notes shoved through tellers' windows have been masterpieces of construction?

Posted by: roy edroso at January 23, 2004 09:28 PM