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Posted: Tue Jun 02, 2009 10:42 pm

It's a new semester at college. I handed out a syllabus yesterday with a fresh email address on it for all my summer students.

Late last night I received this email:

Quote:

Hi,

I am Daniel Webber, a family lawyer to Late Susan Ackman, who died in London UK. Before the death of my late client, she lodge (Three million Dollars) in a secret safe. The deposit was known by both of us. Unfortunately, she passed away, with no next of kin, nor children or family members as her beneficiary. It is on this note, that you come in. I would like to make you her beneficiary to the inheritance. Please, have nothing to worry about, as all legal documentations certifying you as the Sole-Beneficiary will be prepared by me. I intended to claim the funds for myself, but I cannot do that because I am her lawyer and that will raise question- Why me.

If you agree to do this with me, then we will split the total amount 40/60, which means you get one million two hundred thousand dollars. while the balance is mine. If you oblige, then send me your full name, Age, Contact telephone number, occupation and address, in order for me to prepare the legal claim documents for the funds to be released to you. Remember that this transaction requires confidentiality and urgency. Kindly send your response to my private email ([email protected]) I await your urgent response soonest.

Regards
Daniel Webber

Hmmmmmmmmm I do have a student named "Blessing" in one of my classes. Obviously, I can't respond to this, but I just find it totally coincidental that I have this new email address for my classes and within 24 hours of handing out the syllabus, I get a 419 email.

Is this the new college twist? LOL Enroll in classes - get the professor's email address.... and send her an email?

Posted: Tue Jun 02, 2009 11:07 pm

Interesting. Are you sure your e-mail is not listed publicly anywhere?

At the university I attended in the US, All the profs were required to have their official e-mail addresses posted with their official univeristy profile on the website, and were not supposed to use personal ones (some did). Are you certain this is not the case at your school?

There are three other possibilities that come out:

1) If the address is an official .edu or something like that, maybe your mail servers are not configured very well and got harvested via a dictionary attack. A bunch of ramdom or sequential combinations spammed to the single domain to see which did not generate bouncebacks. (school and company domains are popular for this because there are lots of addresses and a decent chance the server is not configured to ignore/block the attacks.)

2) Are you on any of the professor rating websites? Students put their professors on there, and some may have e-mail addresses (though I wouldn't think so).

3) Someone doesn't like you already and put your email on guestbooks Smile

Maybe you should try googling your addy?

Other than that, what a ballsy student to try and scam their instructor. I don't understand why they just wouldn't do it at random...it's easy to get addresses with a MUCH smaller chance of getting caught.

Posted: Tue Jun 02, 2009 11:13 pm

The email addy is my name then the class code at the end @googlemail.com

It's a NEW email addy. LOL I like for my students to get something fresh each semester.

Anyway - coincidence? I dunno. But I found it hilarious.

Trophy Videos · Posted: Tue Jun 02, 2009 11:15 pm

Hi, Professor Doolittle! Glad to see your smiling face back here! Very Happy

One of your students probably has spyware on their pc, and your addy got lifted. That's my guess. Nobody could hate the new Prof this quickly, could they? You haven't been spreading hot pepper on their cheese and crackers, have you? Smile

Posted: Tue Jun 02, 2009 11:46 pm

^^I think I missed an obvious one...and possibly the most likely.

And I often had the same professors for some things...depends on how big the school is I guess. We had about 15k enrolled.

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