I'm glad to hear it wasn't anything untoward after all, but I think you were right to be wary. I suppose it's academic now, but had it not been for the previous messages you discovered, I personally would not have replied because:
At best (and, as it turns out, in fact) it was a genuine mistake. If you didn't reply, the worst that could have happened was that Isaac would have found himself persona non grata at the next interpreter training session (not really the end of the world, a... See more I'm glad to hear it wasn't anything untoward after all, but I think you were right to be wary. I suppose it's academic now, but had it not been for the previous messages you discovered, I personally would not have replied because:
At best (and, as it turns out, in fact) it was a genuine mistake. If you didn't reply, the worst that could have happened was that Isaac would have found himself persona non grata at the next interpreter training session (not really the end of the world, and if he was that bothered about attending he could have tried phoning when you didn't reply to his e-mail - after all, he's on first-name terms with this Rachel, so I think it's reasonably likely he'd be able to find out her phone number too if he didn't already have it).
At worst, though, it could have been someone trying to take a slightly more original tack than your average scammer by convincing you that it had to be a genuine mistake, and thereby making it more likely that you would reply. I don't know what they might have followed up this opening gambit with, but if I were a scammer (perish the thought!) I would *not* write to someone with a far-fetched story about a vast sum of money needing to be stashed in some foreign account to evade the tax authorities of some country or other, nor would I ask someone for their personal details on first contact. Even the old "oops, we sent you a cheque for too much, can you send a cheque to X for the excess ASAP?" is relatively well-known to translators now, I would venture to say (and has certainly been discussed here, at any rate). Maybe it's just that I have a devious mind (have I missed my vocation in life?!), but I'd want to find some way of convincing my intended victim that my message was not an attempt at a scam. I admit that doing something like this - appearing to mistake you for someone else - would be *very* elaborate (simpler to pose as an agency and offer work), but maybe this is exactly what a scammer would want us to think, to convince us it can't be a scam?! The more elaborate, the more convincing, I suppose...
Seriously though, let's not underestimate scammers: as we, and others, wise up to their strategies, they have to find better ways of reeling us in. I hate to be so cynical (a trait that comes from my mother's side of the family), but my way of looking at it is: it never hurts to be cautious, however unlikely it may seem that a message is from a would-be scammer. In this situation I don't think you stood to lose anything by not replying, so it was as safe a course of action as any.
[Módosítva: 2006-09-06 14:52] ▲ Collapse
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