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Bushed? Delete!
TRUST THE cyber pranksters to come up with novel ideas. Yes! We are talking about the widows of warlords, sons of generals who have fled Nigeria and the progeny of ministers who stashed their wealth in Swiss banks and who beseech gullible net users to part with their money, by dangling the bait of providing a large chunk of billions of dollars in return. In short, we are talking about the 419-ers (named about the penal code 419 of Nigeria dealing with cheating and impersonation). The `spamsters', if we may call them so, have come out with a new variant this time, they are taking the name of George Walker Bush. Yep! the President of the United States and son of the former President George Herbert Walker Bush.
If one were to go by the email, received by scores in Hyderabad during last week, is any indication, George W. Bush is seeking financial help for both the removal of the Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein, as well to retrieve, hold your breath, 61 billion US dollars locked up in Iraq from the time of Bush the Senior. While it's not immediately known whether any of the recipients world over fell for the story, the spam mail has only led to smirks.
The story goes like this as narrated by George W. Bush in his `highly confidential' email. In 1980s, his father and then Iraq president began an unsuccessful venture with billions of dollars. Now he expects the emails receiver to send money in aid of "this important venture.'' The email has White House email Id and telephone numbers for contacting them.
The spoof, obviously not taken seriously by anyone, hit headlines in almost all major newspapers all over the world and there has been an unusually high activity on the Net about the fresh Nigerian Bush spam scam.
But, how does the `spamster' get the email IDs? Net enquiries reveal that databases of email addresses are stolen and emails sent to those addresses. If you have received one such mail, you know what to do. Have a hearty laugh and hit the del key.
By Srinivas Reddy K.
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