One of the most obvious signs of a scam email is spelling errors. If you want to persuade me to click on your dubious link, starting out with the phrase “Dear Costumer” is not going to do the job.
Let’s be clear: this is a poorly-executed scam anyway. It doesn’t remotely resemble an actual email from Amazon, and it points to a domain that very obviously isn’t Amazon.com. But the “Dear Costumer” opener sets the lack of credibility very early on. Accuracy matters, even when you have nasty intentions.
Lifehacker’s Mind Your Language column offers bossy advice on improving your writing.
Comments
7 responses to “It’s Harder To Scam People When You Call Them ‘Costumers’”
Either that or this is a legitimate email, and you are secretly a furry.
I heard a theory once that the scam emails are so bad to weed out the smarter people.
kelvinate you are right. Even if the email was written perfectly and looked legitimate, the majority of people are educated enough in these scams to realise it is one. Having sloppy grammar and spelling mistakes leaves only the truly dupable ones to reply, raising the strike rate. These Nigerian Princes don’t have time to reply back and forth with people who have half a brain.
I realise this is a joke piece on writing skills but this is the reason why they’re sloppily written.
I’ve heard the same thing. This scam is targeted at people who would not notice the spelling error.
Yep, this is true. A good idea really.
The whole thing doesn’t make sense unless their servers are sentient or something.
My blog once received a posting (for moderation) which was obviously a template for some spamming software – “{Thanks for such|This is a really|A} great blog! You’ve {put lots of work|got really great content|…}”
95% of the postings I see come though make no reference to the article they’re supposedly answering. The ones promising to subscribe to my non-existent RSS feed are especially entertaining.
It’s the ones that look vaguely relevant that are a pain to filter out.