Hi Mary Anne, seems like it's been a while, hasn't it? It's been a tumultuous week for me, against a backdrop of endless struggle....same-o same-o, in other words. More later, I need to decompress now.

Part of the fun with that quiz was appreciation of the relative artistry, or lack of it, in the writing of those fakes. Some are so awful you have to laugh, and those are the ones that lull us into thinking we can spot every one of them. Some of those examples sounded pretty authentic, and were obviously written by somebody familiar with the corporate milieu, and there was that one with the ironic advice about fraud. Sometimes I get suspicious email but I can't be sure, and have to resort to geeky stuff like looking at the HTML. That's one defense normal people don't have.

Hmmm. I just thought of a heuristic for detecting the majority of phising emails, automatically the same way anti-virus software scans email. [mutter] [mumble]...

Where was I?

Speaking of Internet crime, did I ever mention the Nigerian Scam artist I strung along for a month with an elaborate counter-scam? No? Part of it involved a fake Web site: PetroCock Industries, where the "project team" met in private to work out the details of smuggling the chest of money and John's mother out of Ghana by way of Iraq aboard Rooster's private jet...well, for any of that to make sense you have to log in to this private site with the username "Audience" and the password "Voyeur". When you log in that way, you sit in a virtual gallery watching the game by reading the correspondence and viewing documents like Hamenegger's passport and project plan PDF.

Now, here's the kicker: The reason I don't mind mentioning this now in public and giving out the login is that my scammer was arrested earlier this year. I read a report of a Nigerian scammer arrested in Ireland of all places, and that just happens to match some personal information the scammer inadvertantly divulged. I'm very sure it's him.

[half an hour later] I got sucked into reading the correspondence again. Check it out. Drags a little in the middle, but comes to a socko finish. I almost feel sorry for the bastard.