Re: Inquiry to the Management

Some spam again – not strangely translated, it’s “only” questionable how anyone could actually be interested in an offer made this way… (originally German, I translated it).

Dear Sir or Madam,

we are a dynamic and strongly growing M&A – consultant company.

Dynamic with changing domains1 and with a mail address database you’re spammin to that’s strongly growing over the years. Did the letters in your “M&A” slip that much that the & actually is a rotated superimposition of an S on a P?

(You have to look very closely on their site to see that this “M&A” is actually supposed to mean “Mergers & Acquisitions”.)

Our core competence is the placement of companies who seek a succession plan or a share investment.

Can’t tell about placement, but finding them certainly isn’t if you’re writing to addresses harvested on personal sites like mine.

Our brokering department currently has requests from potentially interested buying parties and investors in your company and your branch of business and your reagion. We noticed your company in this connection.

I’m sure you got no idea at all what “branch of business” my “company” is in and which region this is about.

If you are planning to sell your company or seek an investor, please leave us a brief message by e-mail or phone.

No, you can read this here in public!

Do you intend to sell or are you looking for an investor?
Which price/sum of investment do you want to achieve?
Reason for your plans?
Until when do you want your plan to be completed?

This certainly is the most important thing you have to know about a company… Let’s answer the questions: An investor without any voting rights with at least 10 million Euros without any refund demands, because you can always use money, and until the day after tomorrow at the latest.

Shouldn’t be hard for such competent broken, erm, brokers such as you.

Our specialists will contact you after your reply without obligation. Of course all information and data will be kept strictly secret in our house.

Oh, you got specialists? Didn’t hear from any yet.

Yours

D[…] S[…]

– Backoffice Account Management –

Does this stand for: back-room spam transmission?

If you wish no e-mails of this kind anymore, then you please write a brief e-mail to […] or reply directly to this mail.

The bold emphasis, by the way, is according how they wrote it (in German), actually. Just wondering if a reply would do more than just confirm the ail address as active…

A “disclaimer” is included too, of course (and this one in German and English):

This e-mail may contain confidential, privileged information. If you are not the intended recipient (or have received this e-mail in error) please notify the sender immediately and destroy this e-mail. Any unauthorised copying, disclosure or distribution of the material in this e-mail is strictly forbidden.

A mail that is spammed to numerous arbitrary recipients is (without error) always at the intended recipient. And I don’t think that anything unauthorized has at any time not been forbidden. But the uselessness of such disclaimers isn’t spreading fast…

See also (German): Antispam forum (with the first of their spams from June 2007).

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Photos: mikecco/sxc, mikecco/sxc

1. even it it’s just the .com version of the .biz domain that redirects to a .de domain [↩]