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Things I Did, Below

I, personally, receive email in HTML format. The following was received (and looked) like I received it. At the time, I was more interested in the message than the headers and do not have the original. This is a copy I forwarded to myself as I sent it to my father.

• I removed my email addresses. These came to various accounts and some no longer exist. There are places on this site you can get hold of me if you wish or need to. They are protected from spambots using JavaScript, but all you have to do is click on them.
• All scammer and related email addresses, and any actual website links have been changed, at least putting spaces into them. They appear as underlined blue links, though they aren't.
• Any notes I added in the actual letter are in square brackets ("[" "]"), are bold, red in color, and highlighted. If what I found "behind the links" (email or website) are different than what was displayed, I will include them in this type of note.
• All spelling, spacing, line-wrapping, and punctuation errors are the ones that appeared in the original received email. (I may or may not analyze some or all of these.)

Scam Example
Received 01/02/2007 (10:58AM)

Email Headers

[DO NOT send email to any of the following email addresses]

Notes

Problems I see:

• Obvious (to me, anyway) errors:
  • from the email, itself:
    • "Hello Dear,"? What kind of salutation is that for a banker for this type of offer?
    • Spelling, spacing and grammar errors would NOT occur in a letter written by a professional in the UK. The English might be a bit ... unfamiliar ... by American standards, but the errors I found above (which I will not delineate) should NOT occur.
    • Interesting that a "consultant" would be handling this major a transaction for "the bank" - I would think the CIO or President of the board would handle things like that.
    • Why would they need to handle this type of transaction through a private party? The government and, I would assume banks themselves, should and would handle it correctly, quickly, and accurately.
  • from the Email Headers:
    • aruba.it is an Italian domain (.IT). The email claims to be from the UK. Why would a professional consultant in the UK be sending email through an Italian domain? (BTW: aruba.it appears to be a domain registrar for Italy. It has webmail capabilities, which may or may not be free. If so, why is a professional in the UK using a free email account, and not the bank's?)
    • myway.com is a free "home page" portal, which includes email. If Mr Harris sent an email through aruba.it, why does the reply-to go to myway.com?
    • According to GeoBytes SpamLocator (cut-and-paste email headers to find from whence it came), this email came from 62.149.158.117, which is in Milano, Italy. Again, why would someone in Milano be sending offers for an Irish bank?

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