Wednesday, August 7, 2013

9000% Per Day!

Google does a good job of filtering spam comments out of Blogger, but I still have to delete several per day. Some of these spam commenters are clever and include key words from the post they are commenting on. However, a recent spammer’s pathetic effort just made me laugh:
“Fast Return Investment-9000% after 24 hours.”
With all the warnings we see about being wary of offers that are too good to be true, I’d hope that nobody would get caught by something this ridiculous. But let’s daydream a little. What if we could roll over an investment to make a 9000% return compounded each day. Starting with one dollar, let’s see how our wealth would grow:

After 7 days: The dollar would grow to over $50 trillion! We’d be able to pay off the U.S. national debt with plenty left to spare.

After 15 days: Our wealth would be roughly equal to a block of gold the mass of the Earth.

After 41 days: We’d have about a dollar for every electron in the known universe.

I pity any person who gets taken in by such nonsense.

5 comments:

  1. Couple of years ago I did a quick research on so called Nigerian scam. Everybody receives these offers to assist in transferring or investing funds of late oil baron, blah-blah-blah. At tht time FBI registered claims for funds lost on this scam at $200-400 mln per year. And this were only those who were not embarrassed to complain. So you warning is worth repeating.

    Almost off-topic. My blog lives at wordpress. they have a plugin (Akismet)that filters all spam for $5 a month. Has not failed me once so far. Mine is not as popular as yours, of cause :)Hope Google does not spam out this comment.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. @AnatoliN: I guess the lure of free riches overcomes all reason in some people.

      Based on discussions I've had with other WordPress bloggers, I think Google's spam filtering is pretty good.

      Delete
  2. I was in our post office about 3 weeks ago. Someone was in there asking about electronic money orders or something like that. Apparently 'the RCMP' had sent him a notice that he'd been visiting inappropriate sites and demanded that he send them $200 as a fine. He was looking to send the $200 electronically to 'the RCMP', even though in his words, "I was only on ebay!".

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. @Glenn: That's impressive gullibility. He might be a good candidate for one of those expensive enemas.

      Delete
    2. Sounds like he maybe was caught peekin' at some ladies in skimpy clothing to me....

      Delete