The Grumpy Old Blog

For heaven's sake - if you see the "We have got 239 boxes of iPhone 5's that can’t be sold because they have been unsealed. Therefore we are giving them away for free" message doing the rounds, just avoid it!  That's almost £150k's worth of phones being disposed of free because the seal is broken on the box!!!!!! They are after your email or mobile details so they can either flood you with spam, or try and get personal details and fleece you with a credit or debit card deposit for unusually high postage ( or they'll just try and clear out your bank account, max your credit card or steal your identity ). Come on. Be realistic.  Who in their right mind would give an iPhone 5's away for free because the box is unsealed? I don't see any of the mobile phone shops, retailers or for that matter Apple themselves doing it! Have you seen any similar offers from any other retailers? Dell giving away laptops because the box seal is broken?...

ORIGINAL LETTER FROM THE FRAUDSTER (my reply is below) From: mgrondman@optusnet.com.au (hitting “reply” reveals -   mrsem.68brw@live.com, a strangely different email address ) Subject: Best regards Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2012 11:32:36 -0700 Dear Friend I am Mrs. Emelia Brown, I am 68 years old born in U.S.A, and I am suffering from a long time cancer of the Lungs which also had affected my entire well being, from all indication my conditions is really deteriorating. According to my doctors they have advised me that I may not live for the next two months, this is because the cancer stage has gotten to a very bad level. I was brought up from an orphanage home, was married to my late husband for twenty years and we lived in London until my husband died in a fatal motor accident in London. Since his death I decided not to re-marry, I sold all my inherited belongings and deposited all the money with a bank in London. Presently, this money is still with the bank and I have n...

A sensible question asked by any sensible email account holder. Why do complete strangers from the other side of the world send you nonsense you don't want at a time when you're not the least bit interested in it? Generally to try and make money from you - illegally. Research has shown that it is now nigh on impossible to calculate the number of Nigerian Oil Ministers, their surviving relatives, their lawyers or the sheer volume of millions of dollars on offer via the now infamous Nigerian 419 advance fee fraud - where you receive a charming "Dear Beneficiary" email from a grand sounding person at an impressive address and via an impressive but fake email address. Those of you who receive these emails into you Outlook programme via Microsoft Connector will immediately notice that while the email purports to come from some grand-sounding group of financial lawyers, the return email address is usually a free account - yahoo.com.jp or similar. And some of the sca...