Hello, 'Zagranitsa'!
Recently I received an email with the following content (translated from English): 'Work in the US. Earn what you deserve. We will tell you step by step how to obtain a US residence permit (green card) in one year or less. Our methods are proven. Save money on expensive legal services. By phone (five-digit number with code '770') 24 hours a day 7 days a week you can get a non-binding consultation from a legal consultant.'
In this regard, I immediately had several questions: what exactly are they offering and where did they get my email address?
Grigory KONSTANTINOV, Gorlovka
Sometimes you think: it's good that there was no Internet in the time of Ostap Bender. Otherwise, to his four hundred methods, at least that many more 'methods of making money' would have been added. And how many times during some trendy TV show for 'the especially gifted,' when a question like 'the homeland of Joan of Arc' was asked, did we catch ourselves reaching for the phone? But at the last moment, noticing in the corner of the screen a tiny (but by no means in essence) number indicating the cost per minute of the call, we would pull our hand back in horror.
Instead of work in the States, you are offered a telephone consultation story about what a 'green card' is. Calculate how long it takes you to read one issue of 'Zagranitsa'? And by the way, we devoted an entire issue to this question (No. 19, August 2000). Did you calculate? Multiply each minute by at least three hryvnias – as a result, you will get an approximate amount of the phone bill you will have to pay if you dial the phone number indicated in the letter.
Getting your address was not that difficult: there are quite a few programs for 'scraping' email addresses, which are then used to send out various offers for 'extra earnings in your free time' and 'crazy income from sending out emails.' In the United States, by the way, clogging the virtual mailboxes of your neighbors can cost a pretty penny. Here, unfortunately, we are still far from that, and it is practically impossible to bring phone and internet fraudsters to criminal responsibility.
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