Old people and Internet.
My dearest grandmother, at a ripe age of 75 decided to do the "internet thing" and she got herself online. She just wanted to email family and look up history on the interwebs.

Sadly she made a few mistakes. The first mistake she made was she signed up with BT Internet. The second mistake she made, was that she didnt want her name in her email address so just specified an abbriviation of which was just three characters.

Well within a week she started getting spam for Viagra, Calais, Business Deals with Nigerians, Internet banking passwords, links to pics of 14y.o boys etc.

Now the problem is: Old people have no concept of the Internet. Sadly she took this spam email very personally. She thought that it was being specifically sent to her for a reason. She became realy worried that her name was out there and registered to receive copious amounts of viagra advertisement. She half expected nigerians to be knocking on the door with a suitcase of dodgy money.

The third mistake she made was she actually replied to a 419 scam.

Dear Mr Abababu

Thank you for your message containing your business proposal. I do not know who you are and I don't know how you know me.

I am 75 years old and at this time I am not interested in doing further business. I do not need any extra money as I have a good pension already.

Thank you again. I wish you a good day.

--her name--.


Well im sure the afro's were rubbing their hands together after that!

She left the internet for 3 years before giving it another go. Its a sad story really, as it just goes to show that Spam - for some isnt just a nuisance that can be deleted. But unfortunately some people take it quite literally.

Now her email goes via my own server which has about 3 levels of anti-spam on it, after going through my ISPs own spam filter. I also periodically check her inbox to make sure theres nothing got in there.

So yes 419ers don't think you can send your dodgy business schemes to my grandma. She's firewalled! And to those flogging pharmacuticals. Dont bother sending her any offers of viagra. Her husband is now DEAD!!!
Save your stamps, I mean kilobytes.
(Miggyman, Fri 12 Sep 2008, 16:45, 1 reply)

indeed
few months ago my father called me to say he'd received an email from "the Halifax" even though my folks don't have an account there (they're retired and in their mid 70s) ...

"oh yeah, well, spam, you must get a lot of these since you've been on the internet..."
"no, this is the first"
"eh? you've never had a spam email before? *ever*???"
"no" ...
"oh shit, what did you do?"
"well, we thought about calling the police ..."
"..."
"but we called the Halifax instead and spoke to a very nice person [etc etc]"

the Halifax were very polite about it but I imagine their helpline guy was rather amused...
( writerblock ... embedding disabled by request on, Sat 13 Sep 2008, 12:47, closed)