Is this a scam?

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I received this today.

YES YES YES!! Do not supply any info. I have read about scams like this...

Oh yeah, it's a scam...and a rather transparent one at that.

I say purge that email out of your account as if it were a virus and report them to whatever authority is designated for investigating rip-off artists.

Billys a weird last name.

ITS A SCAM!!

DO NOT, I REPEAT DO NOT ACT ON THIS. DELETE IMMEDIATELLY!!

I have friends in the police force and I asked them what you should do and they said delete and do nothing.

DO NOTHING!! Thats from the british police force. TRUST ME THESE GUYS ARE GOOD!! DELETE MESSAGE COMPLETELY IMMEDIATELY!!

Definitely a scam. These guys/scam artists can be good, like said. My mom taught me a thing that I'll never forget: "There is no such thing as easy money". Exceptions, of course, can be birthday, tooth-fairy, or Christmas cards but that's about it for easy money. If someone seriously wanted some money, they would probably get more money by applying to McDonalds than by trying to work for one of these guys or trying to pay for things solely by scratching Lotto tickets (if someone won the mega-million Lotto, that's great, but that doesn't happen very often! lol. Of course, I'm 17 so I can't even play those games yet! lol).

If you had a Harry Billy, wouldn't you want everyone to know?

It's a scam. There's a lady here who cashed two of their money orders at both of her credit union and traditional bank. The bank asked her to return her 10 percent (which she did) and then referred the loss to their insurance. She faced no penalties from them. The credit union paid it out, found out it was a scam and had her arrested for felony fraud. Nothing like blaming the fellow victim, eh? The charges were dropped, but her account was closed and they're demanding she repay the 2000 plus dollars.

Refer these asshats to whatever authority exists in your area and warn your friends not to be so easily taken. Remember, if these companies were reputable, the people allegedly issuing the money orders would be using western union or electric funds transfers via banks. There is no reason any real company would be farming this out to strangers.

Well, I’m glad to see that we’re not all so gullible as we’ve been led to believe!
BTW, I believe they got my address from here!

Oh, it's not an accusation,
you can get my address from right here\/ (msnm)

Damn messenger! I never use it, so I've defeated it in my box.
But you're exactly right - it's a wide open invitation to some types of junk.

An unsolicited "employment" offer? Really? I had red flags up upon reading the first line.

[the smell of rats rising from my keyboard]

And asking all that personal info from you and all coming from a stranger out of the blue? Excuse me???

No credible business ever needs to rely on common people's personal banking systems to complete their transactions. The banks and other various payroll services and specialized financing agencies can do that. Somebody has a hidden agenda there.

My first response would be to try to trace the origin of that letter, print out the evidence if possible, and bring the hard evidence to the police. Whether or not they'd actually act on it, that's how I'd treat the receipt of a letter like that.

Good luck and don't get burned

It looks a hell of a lot like the Nigerian scam. Besides, who the hell is called "Harry Billy"? Sound more like "hara kiri", which is what you'd be doing if you fell for it.

Mr Mark

Have you used that email anywhere else but here?

Oh, it's on your msn. But I've found that hotmail accounts that I've created and given out to exactly nobody, get spam. I figured that hotmail staff weren't paid enough to be entirely honest and were selling the mail lists.

But there are other ways for spammers to get your email.

1. You put it into some internet form when you want information from them or just a user account. Some website owners are more honest than others.

2. You or a friend of yours got infected with the kind of virus that finds every email address on your computer - especially if you use outlook, and emails the list back to the spammer. Some of them don't even use your normal email client or server to do it so it's harder for you to trace.

3. The spammers create programs to go through phone book data (which you can buy on cd), and send emails to every combination of [email protected] they can think of. I often get those, they get my email address by pure brute force.

So for every valid email address the average spammer sends to, they might send to thousands more invalid email addresses. Anyone who replies - confirms a valid email address.

Until yesterday, I've never gotten a single piece of spam at that address, 5 years. It's not a hotmail account. tfn.net is a small, relatively unused server. It's the address I've guarded closely. I'm sure it only got "out there" when I posted my messenger link here. I'm really pretty good at this IT security thing. The entire reason for this thread is to help increase security awareness in general.