A recent email exchange I was involved in:
To whom it may concern,
I have recently had email with Mozilla firefox logos stating I have won £750,000 and I have to travel to Spain to collect the payment. Also I have to pay a fee to collect such winnings. They claim I have won a competion and won’t transfer the winnings into my bank account til I travel to Spain and collect. All I want to know is this true or false because I feel I have been scammed and I not in a position to leave my location.
Please can you confirm and respond in any emails.
It’s a hoax. Do not respond and don’t send them any money.
Gerv
I have just had a phone call askin for my bank account details and they will transfer via bank and it was from Mozilla uk to fax my details to them. You may say hoax I’m not sure as they did not ask for money up front.
Look, it’s a hoax. You were foolish to give them your phone number, and are foolish to continue contacting them. Stop. We are not giving away money!
Why did you ask Mozilla about the truth of this claim if you are not going to believe our answer?
Gerv
I fear discernment is largely a lost art in most of the world at this point, and I don’t mean only as it pertains to matters of finance. People have trained themselves to believe things that they would *like* to believe, things that if true would make their lives easier or absolve them of responsibility in some way, rather than trying to figure out what might actually be true or even make some measure of sense.
The prevalence of advance-fee fraud is the merest tip of this iceberg. Beneath the surface lies a society that earnestly believes, despite all evidence to the contrary, that a life of virtually unmitigated leisure can make a person more productive than self-discipline and hard work; that one can and should expect to be wealthier than one’s parents, while expending less effort; that things left to themselves will by random chance tend toward order rather than chaos; that no particular effort is required to raise children and that effectively abandoning them in front of a television set to shift for themselves for several hours per day is perfectly acceptable; and that it is reasonable and proper for each person to determine what behavior is appropriate according to whim and self-interest.
As the consequences of this kind of thinking go, losing a few bucks to a scam artist now and then is a relatively minor hassle.