I saw an email (content pasted below) when I came back home from Trivandrum on Friday night. It was from an online friend who is also a blogger. The email came from his personal email ID (we have corresponded earlier) and it also had his signature at the end of the email. The subject line said “My Predicament!!!“. The content was this:
I’m writing this with tears in my eyes,my family and I came down here
to London,England for a short vacation unfortunately we were mugged at
the park of the hotel where we stayed,all cash,credit card and cell
were stolen off us but luckily for us we still have our passports with
us.We’ve been to the embassy and the Police here but they’re not helping
issues at all and our flight leaves in less than 3hrs from now but
we’re having problems settling the hotel bills and the hotel manager
won’t let us leave until we settle the bills.Am freaked out at the moment.
I believed it to be genuine, because it did not mention anything about transferring money to so-and-so account. It had a genuine email signature and the by the nature of the email content, the intent seemed to be like just letting me know about the plight. I got panicked and immediately wrote to my other good friends in London. Then the sender himself wrote back saying that his email ID was hacked and somebody else sent this email. Then two of the friends I emailed wrote back saying that this email is a fake email and it had been in circulation for a long time! One of those friends already had written a blog post about it. Looks I am the last one to know about it. So the first thing I want to tell you all is to be beware of this email if it comes to you!
But there was a good side to this whole story. Within 39 minutes of my email to the friends requesting to help the blogger friend, a friend from London wrote back leaving two contact phone numbers of his. He also checked to see if they had any guests in the hotel in that name. I mean if the incidents in the email were true, the help could have been readily availed. This reinstates my belief that at times of need, there are good friends on whom you can trust upon. That’s what this fake email taught me with this incident. 🙂