Bad English (or “Scamglish”) Gives Away E-Mail Scams

I’ve yet received another “Lottery Winning Notification” – this time from Microsoft (!). Ho ho ho!

There are two items that give away these scams immediately:

1) The domain name of the return link is invariably registered in some foreign country (Hong Kong, Slovenia, Russia, UK, Netherlands, Japan, etc.) but never in the United States. Just check out the last two letters of the domain name and consult the following country list: http://www.computeruser.com/resources/dictionary/domains.html

2) Bad English is the second giveaway since these messages are copied and pasted many times over, sometimes by scam artists who do not even know any English! And the results show...

Here are some sentences written in Scamglish, quoted from the “Microsoft lottery” letter that I’ve mentioned:

“…the Lucky numbers 14-21-25-39-40-47(20) which subsequently won you 1,000, 000.00 (One Million Great Britain Pounds) DATE: 9/APRIL/2007 DRAW NUM: 1 It was held in London (UK) the claims agent assigned to you to, for the Release of your prize…”

“…a wide range of web hosts which we Enjoy their patronage…”

We are all lucky that, even though the bad guys are smart enough to come up with these schemes, they are never smart enough to proofread and edit their English copy.