…but you are too stupid to have an e-mail account, so I’m afraid we just have to take it away from you!
This sweet little story started yesterday, when someone I don’t know - let’s just call him Jackass - received an e-mail with the subject “Nokia is giving away free mobile phones”. The body says that Nokia is testing the efficiency of word-of-mouth advertising. If you send the e-mail to eight people, you will receive a free Nokia 6210 and if you send the e-mail to 20 people, you’ll get a free Nokia WAP. Nokia will contact you via e-mail, you just have to remember to send the mass-forward e-mail to an address at Nokia, too.
“Great!”, thinks Jackass. “If I send this e-mail to eight people, I’ll get a mobile phone that Nokia stopped making a while back, and if I send it to 20 people, I’ll get a model they’ve never been making. Even better, if I send it to everyone in my address book, and that includes a couple of mailing lists, they’ll probably send me tons of phones, hell, they might even make me Vice President!”
Being on one of the mailing lists in Jackass’ address book, I was lucky enough to get the e-mail yesterday evening. The good thing about this story is that I can prove that there are people more stupid than me allowed to attend my univeristy, as the guy who sent the e-mail is using an e-mail address given to him by the university. How is it possible to fall for this? You can read more about the Nokia giveaway hoax over at Sophos.
Today I’ve been waiting for an important phone call that never came.
vegard at vegard dot net with your input. You can also use any of the other points of contact listed on the About page.
Klas
Klas
KlasIt looks like you're using Google's Chrome browser, which records everything you do on the internet. Personally identifiable and sensitive information about you is then sold to the highest bidder, making you a part of surveillance capitalism.
The Contra Chrome comic explains why this is bad, and why you should use another browser.
