(no subject)

[jahbulon.livejournal.com]

Email sent to one of our customers. Anyone seen this before? It could be completely legitimate but it could also be an elaborate phish..

Cut for length Hi - (customer@myisp.com)

Sent from Gemma Brown.

I recently received a chain letter (A piece of mail that had been forwarded to me) that had your e-mail address in it along with several other peoples.

I thought that as your mail address was on one of these chain letters (forwards) you may have others that you would be willing to send to me. I know that this might sound like a daft request but I can assure you that this is a serious request. I am involved in a university project that is based over a year and we are analysing Internet mail, we are trying to ascertain trends and patterns to come up with some fairly accurate statistics regarding the type of mail that circulates around the internet, we know that 70% of all mail is spam but what we don’t know is what percentage of that spam accounts for chain mail (forwards of any type, something that has been forwarded to you, a piece of mail that has formed part of a chain).

Please send absolutely anything and everything that remotely resembles chain mail, forwards of any type (even the rude ones). My project is based over a year and I need one million forwards for this project to be a success, so please keep them coming and don’t worry I have some pretty huge mail boxes.

I would be grateful if you would be kind enough to forward this piece of mail to all your friends as I need as much help as I can get.

Please send all chain mail (forwards) to the following address. gmm_brwn_56@yahoo.co.uk

Everyone that helps will receive a copy of our results and findings in January of next year so please help if you can.

Thanks

Gemma

Reference No - (8GIZQFXUFRF)

You will only receive this mail the once, it will not be sent to you again and your e-mail address will not be passed on, however to conform to the law we must give you the opportunity to have your e-mail removed from our list. Please reply with the word delete to have your address removed.

Comments

[dr-atheist.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a address farming technique, what's the from address, and more importantly, is it legitimate? (do the email headers support it)

[jahbulon.livejournal.com]

The address listed is gmm_brwn_56@yahoo.co.uk

> From: Gemma Brown <gmm_brwn_56@yahoo.co.uk>
> Date: 17/04/2005 0:35:13

Can't retrieve headers as the customer received this email, didn't open it and forwarded it to us. All I have is 'from customer, to me'.

[dr-atheist.livejournal.com]

reply to customer:
bin it, I might look twice if it was from a .edu address or similar, but yahoo? no chance.

[jahbulon.livejournal.com]

I didn't even tell the customer what the email said. His email was informing us none too politely that our security was not good enough because somebody was using his account to send attachments!

Told him to delete the email and tell all his friends to use the BCC field or just, you know, don't waste good bandwidth on bad humour.

Just thought I'd see if anyone's seen this before and if not, well now you have. This seems a little more coherant than most scams.

[valiskeogh.livejournal.com]

sounds about right

[valiskeogh.livejournal.com]

even if it's legit, which it most likely isn't, it's a big ass pointless waste of time

[dr-atheist.livejournal.com]

agreed, bin it, big waste of time and not worth the risk
anywhoo, look at the data collection methods, talk about skewing your own results!

[jahbulon.livejournal.com]

Man I didn't even think of that. That settles it, its totally bogus.

[jahbulon.livejournal.com]

Oh pshaw. What the world obviously needs is more statistics concerning email usage.

Joe job?

[coyoteden.livejournal.com]

That's either address harvesting for spammers, or Gemma Brown pissed someone off and they are trying to get a metric crapload of chain letters sent her way.

What do the full headers say?

Re: Joe job?

[jahbulon.livejournal.com]

I can't see the headers as this email was an attachment on another email that has been forwarded to us.. This mail prog I need to use to answer customer email opens the attachment in a single blank java window, no options, nothing.

[shrug] just remember it and keep an eye out I suppose. If I had any motivation or energy I might create a Gmail account to send her an email, see if she responds. I don't, so I'm going to go home and get wasted instead.

Re: Joe job?

[annamaryse.livejournal.com]

good point...nice icon too.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

Phish. Results skew, reference number to avoid bodymatching, a request for reply in at least two different forms, non-edu address.

Personally, it was the "however to conform to the law" phrase that twigged it to me. Why would anyone who was sending out a so-called one-time mail give an offer to remove the addresses from the list? Why is there even a list being kept at all?