I just sent a public message on Facebook about yet another sorry excuse for a blackmail email, and was promptly alerted by someone close to me that the aforementioned e-mail was spam.
I know, I've received such e-mails before, but thanks for the heads up. Oh, and thanks for giving me the topic for this blog post. I really needed one.
Back to you, reader of my blog. This post is my attempt to elleviate your concern for me, and possibly even share an approach which you might want to adopt yourself.
If you've been reading my blog for some time, then you may have read about the Facebook Lottery that I almost won. I'll be drawing on that post to explain what I tend to do with such scams.
When a con artist like that sends a message, there is a chance that it ends up being reported as spam. That's why con artists tend to use a throwaway e-mail address, which explains why I don't report the initial e-mail. If you appear to fall for their scam, the spammer will have a third party reach out to you, and that's where the fun begins!
Not every scam works this way, but for some of them, keep the following in mind:
The trick is to give a con artist enough information to make you look like a potential victim, but not enough to get you in trouble.
Also, the longer you can pretend to fall for a scam, the more information the con artist is likely to give you (which you can then use against them), the more people you can inform about their service being abused for said scam, the more you can make the scam backfire.
That's why I keep the contact going until I believe I've received all the information the con astist will give me, and then I'll get to work.
CAUTION: If you have to use one abused service to reach another, make sure to inform the service that's furthest away first, because some of them react fast!
As always, I hope you enjoyed reading this blog post. If you have any questions or comments, then please let me know in the form down below.
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