I keep getting these emails

I keep getting these emails from "nigeria" saying if I give them all this personal information they will give me millions of dollars. I have been deleting them but they are getting more frequent. Should I just keep deleting them or should I turn them over to the police? What would you do?

Jbug

I called the police, who turned it over to the secret service for some reason. I kept expecting these guys in dark suits and sunglasses to storm my work place and ask questions!

I would turn them into the email provider as spam. That's what it is....just spam. I get them occasionally myself and of course I never open them and never respond...I just delete as spam. I don't know what email you are using...if it's provided by your ISP or it's a yahoo, gmail, hotmail type or not....depends on what it is what you can do with it.


sabby

It's actually more than spam, it's federal mail fraud. If someone were to do what they say, they would be defrauding the individual who responded and email is apparently covered under the mail system. I can't believe that people still try that scam, as much publicity as it has recieved.

I get tons of those e-mails and variations on a theme too. My hotmail account filter is really good at blocking them, but for some reason they seem to get through my spam filter on my main e-mail account. I don't even open them, just hit delete.

--splitimage

you get this mental picture of some Nigerian tribesman out in a straw hut with a laptop computer and a satellite dish using two fingers to type up all the e-mails.....in return he gets a cow and a chicken and a stone to sharpen his spear.....

i get these e-mails at least once a week despite having a spam filter and i just delete them without opening but...does anybody know if these can be reported as abuse???

I use to get them all the time until I finally got sick of it and called the fbi on it. they said they are aware of the scam and are working on it. since then I have not gotten another one for some reason. even had them supposedly coming from the head honcho at the fbi lol

Yes, I get them too. I just delete them. Mine say it's a scam against the African government, that an American deposited millions of dollars without making a will. Since he works for the bank, if I file the paperwork stating I'm X's heir, he'll make sure it all goes through and we'll split the profits.

If it makes any difference my email isn't at hotmail,yahoo or aol. My email is through my isp. I asked my dad what to do and he said I could block it through my email and I did that. So we will see if that works. I still feel uneasy about the whole thing and wonder how did they get my email. It's not just Nigeria I get them from either. I've gotten them from Britian, South Africa and a couple of other countries. I used to just laugh but now its just down right annoying.

Jbug

You should have a place to mark things as spam so they go into a spam file insead of your email. What kind of you email acct do you use?--Suzy

I use cox.net and I use outlook express.

Jbug

Is that the kind of email account where you can only make one account, or you have one account that everybody knows so it would be a big hassle to switch accounts?

The first email address I ever made is so loaded down with spam I barely check it any longer. I think it's because I gave used it to register at so many places. At that time, never occurred to me that disreputable sites will give our your email to people who want to phish you or sell you pills illegally, but now I have a couple of accounts (at yahoo) for whatever it is I want to do on the internet, and just one for business and social purposes. Because I only give it to people and organizations I trust and have known personally, I haven't gotten much spam on the business account.

Now, for I have absolutely no idea what you have or haven't done with your account, so for all I know this whole post was completely useless to you, and if so, I apologize for wasting your time (and I hope I haven't insulted you.) But this is what's worked for me, for the most part. I've never found a way to stop these guys, but at least one can keep them from spamming up the account that one is going to get important mail in. (Or I hope one can!)

No you haven't insulted me. I have a couple of email accounts out there. This one is a fairly new one and I do give it out to a few companies and they or I thought they were reputable. I'm not sure how these people got my name or email. I'm still on the fence and have gotten an email from my mom saying we'll talk about it when I go out to her house tomorrow. I see a lecture in my future LOL.

Jbug

Don't forget to clean out your deleted file periodically. Also, delete all the cookies and be careful about the kind of websites you go to. Sometimes free comes with a price in the form of unwanted email!!

JBug, I use Outlook Express too and have a free Spam filter . I have used it for a year now and have had very good results! You can get it for free at www.spamfighter.com Good luck
Lily