Emails you will never get
February 24th, 2009 by noam, Filed under: Commentary, Spam
A short list of legitimate emails you will never get, if you have something else feel free to add:
* Lottery winnings - Microsoft is the big winner here, they keep sending me winning notifications, but I just don’t collect 
* Your doctor’s prescription (probably some obscure medicine might go through, while most won’t) - to buy “cheap” fake medicine
* Your Antivirus renewal notice - trying to get you to install some form of malware
* Your bank’s security notice, and statement - of course its phishing scams
* Paypal payments being done to your name or from your name - phishing scams mainly
* Job offers - I get these money “mule” offers and get paid per call spam
Anything I missed?
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* electronic Postcards - yes, there really used to be something like that back in the day
* Business offers from Nigeria! If the national Nigerian telcom company wants to buy your product you will probably never hear about it unless they call you
Even then when someone will call you, will you fly there?
I can already see the new scams from Nigeria aimed at business men, you have won the THIS AND THAT RFP, come claim your money - bring the servers here as well and we will help you install your winning offer
actually i do get legitimate anti-virus renewal notices by email…
i suppose because i actually pay for my anti-virus, when my subscription comes up they email me with my name and customer number and tell me that my subscription is going to expire soon.
Actually, I received two of the items from the list this year:
1) A legitimate message from Paypal that asked me to collect a payment TO ME by someone I didn’t know. I double-checked the mail, triple-checked the URL it wanted me to go to (paypal.com), and finally opened it in a separate VM.
This actually turned out to be a real message, and the person trying to pay me had mistyped an e-mail address.
2) Antivirus noticed: McAfee keep sending me messages about various subscriptions I’ve had with them in the past, mostly trial licenses that came with PC’s I bought, but also about renewals for corporate licenses. These sometimes include links to their website as well.