AOL Spam Filtering Worst I've Seen Yet

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Not quite a Newb Joined: 29 Oct 2008 Posts: 55

I have a relative that constantly gets hit with fraud emails that bypass the filters when they use AOL email. I'm amazed with my Gmail account getting rid of about 99% of it. Unfortunately, here's yet another example of fraud that got through AOL:

From: schnieder <[email protected]>
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 8:26 pm

I am Mrs. Emily Schnieder from Netherlands,I am 58 years old,i am deaf and
suffering from a long time cancer of the breast ,from all indication my
conditions is
really deteriorating and it is quite obvious that i can't work or do any
stressful thing, according to my doctors they have advised me that i may not
live for the next two months,this is because the cancer has gotten to a
very bad stage. I was brought up from a motherless babies home was married to
my late husband for twenty years without a child, My Husband (Patrick Schnieder)
died in a fatal motor accident Before his death we were true Christians.
Since his death I decided not to re-marry,I sold all my belongings
and deposited the sum of $8.6million dollars with a Security Company in
United States Of America .Presently, this money is still with them and the
management
just wrote me that for
keeping it for so long will attract demurage fees as the storage fees paid by me
has expired.To avoid confiscation I need someone whom i can trust to recieve the
funds and utilise it according to my wishes.

Presently, I'm with my laptop in a hospital in Frankfurt Germany where I
have been undergoing treatment.I have since lost my ability
to talk and my doctors have told me that I have only a 2 months to live.
It is my last wish to see that the funds is used for charity work
like helping the less previledge,the poor homes,the motherless babies homes,the
deaf homes,churces,and schools.All I seek
is a God fearing person,who will carry out my last wishes and before I
emailed you today I prayed.

As soon as I receive your reply I shall give you the contact of the Security
Company in the USA. All i need from you is an assurance that
the funds when recieved by you will be used for the said purpose.

Waiting for your reply.

Emily Schnieder.

There must be about 10 different things that set off flags in this suspicious email.. when is AOL going to catch on?

Posted: Sat Apr 11, 2009 2:59 am

None of the free email providers will ever be scam free.

Not quite a Newb Joined: 29 Oct 2008 Posts: 55

That may be so.. but the fact is.. some free email providers have done a fantastic job, while others are god awful. The Gmail vs. AOL comparison is definitely an example of some being much better than others. I think AOL should work on that bigtime.

Hey AOL, take a look at http://www.google.com/postini/

Enjoy!

Not quite a Newb Joined: 13 Feb 2007 Posts: 24

as a sys admin at an email provider I can tell you that email sucks. You can and can't do things, like block certain words or phrases. You can block some by IP but they'll just change their IP.

it's basically a never-ending battle against scammers, where I work we have a solution that I believe does a good job limiting outbound scam mail, and feeds back into inbound mail, but even that requires almost daily tweaking and is far from perfect. I literally spend 20 hours a week doing this.

basically the only thing slowing these people down? baiters.The law doesn't seem to be impacting it.