The language e-mail fraudsters use is a giveaway. They're like a liar who says "Yes" with his voice and "No" with his head. That's what sociologists call leakage - uncontrolled gestures betraying meaning - sometimes more leak than boat.
The first line of defence against scammers is the anti-virus program: you have one, don't you? The second is your e-mail program filtering out dodgy mail. (Right click the message in Outlook, then click Junk - where all future messages will go. You can probably add accompanying sound effects like desperate yowls to mark incarceration .)
The third defence is to refine the mesh of mail filtering by changing the settings in first Junk then Mail Options. The next and necessary defence is common sense: the signs and signals that alert you to everyday crookery recur in crook mail, involving language not gesture.
I've been scuffling through my junk mail looking at a bout of mail purporting to be from my bank. They have these features in common:
They overact. The tone is either too friendly ("Hi, Robert") or starchy ("Dear Customer"). My bank manages the balance better by using mass mailing technology. This applies individual salutations - "Dear Mr ..." or American style "Dear Robert Greig" - to a million identical letters.
A personal signature generated by a machine provides the personal touch: a spontaneous organised expression.
The scammer's utterances are inconsistent. Some greet me with the vast delight we might reserve for long lost cats, others suggest I am a dead one. This may signify a crook's nervousness, but the point is not to understand the scammer but nuke him or her.
The language is clunky. "We understand that this may be an inconvenience..." True, bankers are not always entirely literate but they're bright enough to know it so they hire those who would understand the force of the brief and concrete: "may be inconvenient". ("As for living, our servants will do it for us," said Oscar Wilde.)
The scammer has lurching delusions of adequacy. "We have noticed that someone other than you logged into your account..." Do they know what I look like? Was "someone" carrying a bag labelled "swag"? Why didn't they blow the whistle?
The style is erratic. Bankers' scribes would tend not to say "reduce the instance of fraud" but its "incidence". You see, bankers fear that among their customers may be rich zealots who regard murky language as a sign of murky judgment.
The scammer can't get his or her act together and aspires to being a loveable rogue. Mail sometimes claims to be from "Standard Bank" - and directs me to a replica of its site - and sometimes from iStandard Bank, to flatter my African identity or taste for gadgets.
The scammer taunts "You can't find me." But if you pick up your mail in Google and hover the cursor over the sender, it may reveal the person's mail address.
In this case it is [email protected]
Now Fullens is a Taiwanese company. Its site - loosely translated from what Bling loosely calls "Chinese", says: "The origin of this company was founded in 1986, has been engaged in human resource management, consultancy work, as well as books published." I shan't continue: the custard-pie has landed.
Some possibilities: Fullens is a reputable company employing the dubious Cheryl; or disreputable, which is why Cheryl is there; or Cheryl has ghappsed an identity in order to ghapps others' money.
Best way to find out is to write to Fullens asking, or to Cheryl. Or simply consign her to Junk.