It's a Conspiracy, I Tell You

The Great Illuminati want me.

A spam scam message I just got:

Congratulation you have been chosen among the ten lucky people given the great chance of becoming rich and famous be becoming a member of the Great Illuminati for details kindly contact person-------->>>> (AT) [e-mail address]

This is big.

Comments

[Eidde]

And you're telling the entire world? They trusted you!

[LifeStrategies]

Thank goodness for spam filters.

Yet I still get a dozen or two spam messages a day...

[Curly4]

Still people fall for these scams even with it being in the news almost every week. Will people never learn?

[Gasman]

each new fact must be learned by 10,000 people every day. about 4 million still waiting to learn this fact this year.

XKCD explains

[Windypundit]

Like you expect us to believe you're not already a member of the Illuminati...

[StackOfCoins]

This.

FAKE NEWS.

[Eugene Volokh]

Yes, but this is the Great Illuminati.

[Eidde]

Hey, I just learned that if you rearrange the letters in Adam Weishaupt's name (he was the alleged founder of the Illuminati), you get "Adieu, hat: Swamp," which means that the Deep State isn't going to let Donald Trump (symbolized by his MAGA hat) drain the swamp.

You can also rearrange the letters in the name to get "Aha Datum Wipes," meaning that Illuminati bots are scouring the Internet to eliminate all reference to...aaack...

(Sorry, the above was just a joke, of course there's no Illuminati, and even if there were they'd have everyone's best interests at heart so there's no need to worry)

[Scarecrow Repair & Chippering]

Wipes? Is that where Hillary got the idea?

[TWW]

APO Nigeria.

[Drewski]

Darn it; I only got invited to the Fair-to-Middling Illuminati.

[Danley Wolfe PhD, MBA]

I also receive a large amount of junk including pfishing email (screenshot images with url links underneath for you to click)... I am no longer amused and feel the internet providers need to do a lot better to make us safe. Google says to avoid clicking .. laugh out loud, how about Google preventing them from being delivered. Or how about Google actively identifying them and reporting them to authorities. And that might require strong laws against doing this stuff, pfishing and other types of harmful spamming.

[Rossami]

How about someone with a PhD and and MBA (or is it a PhD in MBAs?) figure out how to do a better job of identifying and blocking spam messages without blocking legitimate messages? And while you're at it, maybe use that MBA to set up a company and get rich off your new spam filter? Because obviously, this is so easy that you can do what thousands of engineers and system administrators have been trying to do over the past several decades.

Maybe you could also use that awesome intellect to figure out why the existing laws against "pfishing [sic] and other types of harmful spamming" have failed to stop it before proposing that "more the same" will somehow fix it.

[Andrew Dhuey]

Ever get the scammer call supposedly from the IRS? That's also fun. The magistrate judge has ordered your arrest. Federal Marshals are on their way to your home, etc. If you want 15-20 minutes of free entertainment, play the dummy. Keep acting like you're trying to follow the instructions, but do the wrong thing.

"Okay, I just put a check in the mailbox addressed to the IRS in Washington. That solves the problem, right?"

"I'm tuning myself in at the closest police station. May I put one of the officers on the phone with you? I am so sorry for what I did."

[Finrod]

But can you see the fnords?