mfh's Journal: Spammer Got Me! What Will they Think of Next?

Today I received a seemingly innocuous email from a complete stranger, regarding PHP. That did not strike me as odd at all because I am somewhat of an expert on the subject.

The message was a typical plea for help and it started off claiming to have seen me posting on the newsgroups and forums, which was possible but unlikely, as I haven't posted on the PHP newsgroup in months, so I was immediately suspicious of the email.

The sender claimed they had a couple questions and then asked me to answer them for them and that they would like to hire me to do more consulting if they liked my response.

I responded as I always do to such requests, with a link to rentacoder.com and I asked the sender to let me know what their username was so that we could begin a business relationship together. I figure that if I am going to be spending any time helping a stranger, I might as well get paid for it, or I will be the one choosing who and when to help!

The person or bot on the other end of the discussion responded with a strange comment that seemed unrelated. I quickly fired back that they need to do what was asked before I answered any of their questions and that I would not discuss business over email because it has proven to be less than fruitful (and it really has).

The person quickly fired back an angry response so I told them to piss off and that I knew their trick was to get free writing samples from me.

Amateurs!!! :-) I get paid if I have to write anything (except this journal)!!!

So beware of this trick and don't fall for it. If you don't know them, give them a challenge question.

Moo

[Chacham]

How do i know this is a real JE?

Re:

[mfh]

Hmmm very interesting! I hope it is... ;-)

Re:

[Chacham]

Of course, by _answering_ this comment, you have let loose the most evil virus known to mankind.

Re:

[nizo]

Maybe next time you could include a link to paypal, so he could enter his account/password to "verify" who he is? :-)

Re:

[Chacham]

And giveaway my own sevret identity in the process?!?!

You must be an evil (fill in the blank). Away with you! :)