My e-mail address is
The reason I am typing it out like this is because I am receiving a considerable amount of spam e-mail, and this is an attempt to slow the spammers down. On a bad day, I would get about 30 spam e-mails. Here is an example of the content of these e-mails:
Those behind these e-mails are trying to advertise medicines, which are very often prescription medicines, most often Viagra or Cialis. Some of these people are rather cunning, and so in an attempt to get around the spam filters, they misspell the name of the drugs.
Also, you can bet your bottom dollar that these are fake drugs.
These people claim that you can buy university qualificatons (Bachelor's or Master's degrees), or even doctorates, without getting them the usual way, i.e. getting a place in university first, and then 4+ years of study, and passing exams, to be awarded the degree.
Although I haven't been getting this kind of e-mail lately, these spammers claim that you can get professional standard software (e.g. Office, AutoCAD, Dreamweaver etc.) for a small fraction of what one would normally expect to pay (easily a couple of thousand euro), and you can download this software.
There is no guarantee that some of this software will not be pumped up with malware, and also you won't get any technical support from the creators of this software.
This is a type of fraud we have come across a lot in recent years. It is when someone sends an e-mail claiming to be from a bank, and they have either lost your login details, or it is because of security updates, it is necessary for you to give your login details to them again.
These scams never work with me for two reasons (a) no bank will ever, on any single occasion, ask for all login details, i.e. account number and full PIN, and (b) all of the e-mails of this type claim to be from banks of which I am not a customer. To be honest, I find it hard to understand how come these spammers have not got the message.
Here is another type of e-mail that I haven't been getting in recent years - from someone looking to make a fast buck on the stock markets.
What they do is search the stock markets for shares that are not doing well, for example, shares that are only worth one cent (€0.01) each. Then they buy up enormous quantities of shares, and send e-mails around encouraging others to do the same. If the share are one cent each, then €300 will buy 30,000 shares.
When they try to get other to buy more shares, the demand for the shares increases dramatically, and so does the value of the shares.
Then when the shares have appreciates as far as they are going to, they sell the shares, and make a tidy profit (possibly several thousand euro). Naturally, when some people gain, others lose.
You're probably asking, is this illegal, and the answer is, yes, it is seriously illegal. If the Securities and Exchange Commission (in the US - I don't know what the equivalent in Ireland is) gets wind of what is going on, then those involved in this type of activity could find themselves doing prison time (possibly several decades). You do not want to go messing about with the stock exchange like this, there are astronomical amounts of money involved, and it's quite possible that if you do this at this time of financial crisis, you could be spending nearly the rest of your life in prison.
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