First published: 31st May 2008
Spammers are staying creative in their attempts to trick fools out of their money. A recent message claims to be from the "MINISTERIAL COMMITTEE OF AFRICAN UNION GOVERNMENT" in Ghana, and starts:
This is to notify you that African union government have received complaints about being swindled off your money by our bad citizens in Africa. And world bodies have called to our notice to look into this menace that is eating deep and simultaneously undermines the name of Africa as a continent.
It goes on to say that the crimes will be investigated, and compensation will be released "without delay", please fill in some personal details. Quite why the African Union Government would need to use an Australian webmail account and would want a reply sent to a GMail account is unclear.
We guess that there will be some minor "handling fees" to pay before the compensation can be "released". The spammers appear to be working on the principle that people stupid enough to fall for an earlier scam are too stupid to learn caution when receiving unexpected email messages.