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Delete This at Your Peril: One Man's Hilarious Exchanges with Internet Spammers

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Every day
Jamming your In-Box
Is SPAM

This book
Is about one man
Who replied

Watch Bob
Spam the Spammers
For laughs


The paragraphs below use some of Bob's examples to give the reader a sense of this book, which is really quite clever if you like this sort of thing.

[Warning: Replying to spammers can cause spam mail to increase exponentially]


Greetings to you in the name of the Most High.

A business acquaintance of mine visited your fine country of Scotland recently and recommended you as a fine and honorable gentleman who can be entrusted with a matter of the highest confidentiality and importance.

He has assured me that you are an expert in business and trade, and that you may have purchased already four golden lions, two leopards and an alligator from the only son of His Excellency King Arawi of Togo. I hope that they are thriving and bringing you much joy.

First, I will introduce myself. I am a former citizen of a Soviet country, but through good fortune and most reputable mail order organization I was able to get married to a good man from Nigeria, who owns both a textile company and a pottery barn. I also obtained for myself a PhD doctorate in Business and Finance through correspondence with major unaccredited university in the United American States.

I am sad to say that my husband is now late due to assassination by his competitors, and I am left alone with his business affairs to handle. I will also tell you that due to his relatives in the government, my husband has been able to save a lot of money which is in an account in my name, and I trust you to keep this information in confidence. My friend Bob, I am a beautiful woman of only 25 years, and I am unable to do business here with the men in Nigeria. My late husband's lawyer cannot be trusted with such matters, and I am looking to you to help me transfer 32 million Sterling pounds to Scotland, where I understand you own a Cheeseburger Business and an African Café.

I would like for us to get better acquainted and maybe you would like to become my husband. I can cook genuine African dishes, especially yam potage, Isi Ewu and Afang soup, which I am sure your customers will enjoy. We can achieve many great things together, you and I.

My dear Bob, I am so excited about this venture between us that I can hardly wait for your soonest reply. Please also send me your photo and the name of your bank and account number so I can begin preparing to transfer the money.



Modesta Spamminovitch-Upayme



This is a quick and funny read, and heartily recommended to anyone who has e-mail.




Amanda Richards, July 19, 2008

Anyone who uses the internet at all has to be familiar with unsolicited junk email, commonly known as Spam. Some spams are also scams. In particular there is a regular traffic, known in America as Phishing, in efforts to obtain banking and credit-card details from the unwary. Neil Forsyth, recently the author of a perceptive and sympathetic study (Other People's Money) of the young Scottish credit-card fraudster Elliot Castro, now turns his attention to the phishers.

This time he comes in from a different angle. He categorises the main forms of phishy correspondence - vast Nigerian giveaways, bogus Russian brides, local agents and franchisees solicited for non-existent businesses - but this time he entertains us with his replies to the phishers, pretending to hide behind the persona of a certain Bob Servant (?geddit?). For me at least, a lot of the interest and fascination of the exchanges was in wondering how many of them were real and how many invented or enhanced for the purpose of making a book out of them. I could have asked Neil, but whether or not he would have told me I decided that would have been unfair and so I have refrained. Obviously, the more of these messages that are genuine the better the whole joke is. I like to think that at the very least all the original emails received from the various would-be hoaxers are as they sent them.

One has to wonder what success-rate these hoaxes enjoy. Some are in such bad English that surely they must raise the suspicions of all but the most trusting, gullible and inexperienced. Others look a bit more professional, but are open to perfectly simple and obvious responses - e.g. after receiving several requests from a firm in Australia to send them £10 to cover the cost of their sending me some enormous sum I finally wrote back suggesting that they deduct their £10 from the said fortune, and I imagine that anyone else who would have so much as taken the trouble to reply at all would have replied in the same terms. What Neil Forsyth - sorry, Bob Servant - has done is to keep stringing them along and see how much of their time he can waste, and it really does read as if once the phishers have got a bite (or think they have) they can be pretty gullible themselves, to judge by the patience they show in the face of some rather obvious kidding and stalling.

No two of us have the same sense of humour, and I don't know whether this book will appeal to yours. To me it's not so much rolling-in-the-aisles stuff as an intriguing mixture of very clever and ingenious on the one hand and completely barefaced micky-taking on the other. Searching for a comparison, the one that sprang to my mind unbidden was the late Humphry [sic] Berkeley's spoof correspondence from H Rochester Sneath, headmaster of the nonexistent Petworth School, to various public school heads. This might seem an odd parallel as Berkeley was the English of the English and Bob Servant operates from the dour Scottish fastness of Broughty Ferry, but I think that if you know and enjoy Berkeley's effort you will likely enjoy Bob's too. If you do not know, and consequently cannot enjoy, Berkeley's fake correspondence with real-life stooges you can find it in The Oxford Book of Humorous Prose.

This collection could be sold as having a social purpose in teaching the rest of us how to deal with pests like these, but Neil Forsyth does not try to sell it in these terms so neither shall I. I also wonder whether it may do for Broughty Ferry what the TV series Tutti Frutti did for Buckie in terms of publicity. If so, I trust that this fine community will reward the author with e-vouchers exchangeable in its numerous bars.

Have you ever been tempted to respond to any of the ridiculous scam messages that flood your inbox on a daily basis, just to see what kind of response you get back or to see how far you can take the discussion before blowing the spammer off? Well, one man has taken that idea and flat-out run with it, and you won't believe the results. If ever there were a true character on this earth, it has to be "Bob Godzilla Servant," former window cleaner (until some gypsies stole his ladders, but don't get him started on that again), veteran of Dundee's Infamous Cheeseburger Wars of 1988-89, all-around man about town, gifted tall tale teller, and now a hero for the twenty-first century. Not only can he vanquish spammers with one hand tied behind his back, he's even capable of leaving at least one of them laughing about the whole thing.

"Bob Servant" is unique, which makes it impossible for me to communicate just how funny this book is. He is as much in his element in front of a keyboard as he is down at the local pub regaling anyone and everyone with his stories, schemes, and ideas. There's just no way I could adequately describe the likes of "Bob's" best mates Frank the Plank, Chappy Williams, and Tommy Peanuts, let alone "Bob" himself, to you here, nor could I even begin to do justice to the halcyon days when "Bob" dominated the cheeseburger van market. Even if I could, it wouldn't be right for me to do so. You are in good hands with journalist Neil Forsyth, who tells you everything you need to know (and then some) about his good friend "Bob's" extraordinary life and times.

Fittingly, the fun begins with the original standard bearer of spam, the old 419 (better known as the "Nigerian" scam). In this case, it's the son of a dead tribal king in Togo seeking help transferring a fortune from his home country into an American bank. "Bob" wants more than the standard cut and ends up getting his African friend promising to deliver talking lions as payment. The guy who offers him a wonderful textile distribution opportunity ends up advising "Bob" on the legal problems he faces after kidnapping his postman. Then he's wooing his new Russian wife-to-be in his own unique way (it involves an ostrich), turning another 409 scammer into the primary advisor to the ultra-realistic African restaurant he plans to open, starting an online love affair (pretending to be a woman, of course) with the son of a dead general in Sierra Leone, etc. There are eight sets of genuine email correspondence in all, each one of them as hilarious as the next.

Frankly, I can't even begin to describe just how entertaining every single page of this book is. "Bob Servant" is the best character to come along in a long, long time, and Delete This At Your Peril is the funniest book I've read since I discovered The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Red Dwarf many years ago. Heck, this might actually be the funniest book I've ever read, period. You won't just enjoy reading this book; you'll want to tell your co-workers about it, buy it as a gift for friends, and light a candle in hopes that "Bob Servant" will someday regale us with more stories or - even better - pen an autobiography of his exceptional life.

How many times have you read of, or thought of, leading scam artists on who want to use your bank account to deposit a cool 10 million dollars (and you get to keep 20 percent!) Bob Servant, a man with obviously TOO much time on his hands (well, he is semi-retired), not only has written back to countless Nigerian Bank Deposit scammers but has recorded the exchanges in a laugh-outloud book "Delete at Your Peril." I was hooting louding by the time I got through the Lions and Gold exchange.

If you want a laugh, this is a funny, funny book. Send email scams to Mr. Bob Servant of Scotland at your peril.

I've passed through Broughty Ferry many times on my way to and from my ancestral homeland in Montrose, but apart from remembering the name, I've never really given the place much thought. Nevertheless, it is clear that within Broughty Ferry there live some highly entertaining characters, none more so than Bob Servant, the author of this book. He seems to have had a variety of jobs including window cleaning and running a fleet of cheeseburger vans, but this book is devoted to an amusing sideline that he started after winning a computer in a raffle. I expect that even those who lost in that raffle will be glad that Bob won if they read this book.

Bob soon discovered spam email as we all do, but he chose to take the spammers on at their own game. Eventually, he showed a long-time friend, journalist Neil Forsyth, what he'd been up to. Neil immediately recognized the potential for a book and, with Bob's agreement, set about assembling it. He picked out eight of the spammers and the exchanges that followed them, editing where necessary to remove addresses (postal or email) and providing footnotes as necessary to point out various untruths. He left all the swear words in, so you'd be best to avoid this book if they upset you (surely not, in this day and age). Each spammer gets their own chapter in this book, which also includes an introduction to Bob and a brief overview of spam, both written by Neil.

The cases allegedly concern, respectively, an Afican prince whose tribal king father had just died. a British man killed in an accident in Nigeria, an artist having problems with the way he is paid for his work, a belt manufacturer seeking British agents, an African military general whose father has died and, finally, an organization extracting material from Africa seeking representatives. I'm guessing that these scenarios are familiar to many people who do not have adequate firewalls on their computer. I saw (and deleted without further action) some of those when I had my first spell of being online from home. I have not seen them when using library computers, internet cafes or since re-connecting to the internet from home in 2008.

Bob responded to these emails in ways that the senders could never have anticipated. In the first case, he responded by demanding more than he was offered, progressing to ever more ludicrous demands. He didn't want cash, preferring lions and other animals. In one of the other caes, Bob suggested setting up an African restaurant in Scotland. In the artist's case, Bob chooses to commision a painting instead of helping directly with the artist's finances. In all cases, Bob avoided giving any of the original senders what they want, content to string them along until either he realized that it was time to finish the exchange or they gave up on him.

Bob's wicked sense of humor makes this a higely entertaining book. Maybe he will inspire others to take revenge on the spammers too, but very few would be as outrageously funny as Bob. Will there be a second volume? I don't know, but I suspect that if this book is the success that it deserves to be, the spammers will blacklist Bob so his source of material will dry up. He could then set up an email account with a different identity but if he does that, he may become the first person ever to change his identity to ensure that he receives spam.

Yes, this is a hilarious book that anybody who has ever been spammed can enjoy.

A blurb on the cover from "MAXIM" exclaims "GENIUS! Highly entertaining and brilliantly deranged." I wouldn't go that far with the genius and brilliant part, but "Delete This at Your Peril" IS very funny and a bit deranged. I read the entire book in less than an hour, and although Servant is as long-winded at times as he is weird, I had some real laugh out loud moments.

The question is, does "Bob Servant," putative author of this humor opus that makes fun of Internet spammers and scammers, really exist? Or is he the bizarre creation of "editor" Neil Forsyth who holds the copyright to the book?

Not that it matters. What Bob Servant (or Neil Forsyth) does--and this has been done before, see, for example, Black Hat: Misfits, Criminals, and Spammers in the Internet Age (2004) by John Biggs--is play along with the spammers as though he is some unsophisticated rube who is falling for the con. What makes the book so funny is how Servant is able to turn the tables on the 419 scam masters from Nigeria and elsewhere and rope them into a lengthy and fruitless email correspondence, while holding out the carrot of his actually going to the bank. Servant piles it on relentlessly with misdirections and pratfalls among and with his ne'er-do-well friends and acquaintances in Broughty Ferry, Scotland.

In the first chapter, there is a certain "His Royal Highnest, [sic] Jack Thompson...the only son of late King Arawi of tribal land" who is seeking "a foreign partner" to transfer "$75m" to, "for investment," to whom he will pay 20% of the proceeds.

Bob Servant fires back with "Good morning your Majesty, I want 30%, and not a penny less."

After a bit of pulling line, Servant declares that he wants the money in lions, and he wants pictures of the lions. Thompson sends him a photo of four identical gold lions, but Servant is not satisfied. He writes, "There appears to have been a slight misunderstanding my friend, I was expecting four live lions, not gold ones."

So Jack Thompson replies, "I am buying four male lions from my friends private zoo and he has also arranged for shipment to Scotland." Thompson attaches a photo of a lion! But this isn't enough. Servant wants the lions to be able to talk. After some discussion of what the lions might be able to say, Thompson assures Servant that one of the lions can talk. Meanwhile Servant is pretending to get the funds ready to send via Western Union to Thompson. But then Servant decides he (and his buddy "Frank Theplank") also want "2 leopards, 1 elephant, 1 alligator, 2 parrots, 1 hedgehog."

At some point Thompson begins to shout: "BOB LETS GO STRAIGHT TO THE POINT. THE LIONS AND LEOPARDS ARE HERE WITH ME AT THE BACK OF MY HOUSE THEY ARE FRIENDLY AND ONE OF THE LION TALKS. BOB SEND ME THE £1700 SO I CAN COLLECT THAT MONEY AND SHIP THEM TO YOU."

Bob Servant replies by asking "What are the names of the lions?" and "What does the lion say when it talks? The bank is preparing me some forms."

To a Russian babe named Alexandra who wants to find a husband, Servant writes, "What a fantastic photo. My God, what a pair of bazookas..." She responds in part with "I do not like Russian men, their attitude to women. I want to love and be loved. Unfortunately, I have not found that in the country. I am gentle women but I am a tiger when I am in love!"

At length Servant sends Alexandra a photo of himself holding a very large, bloated carp. (Well, not himself but some old guy, whom Alex deigns to find interesting, although I don't think she got the symbolic intent of the caught fish.) Bob regales her with tales of life at Broughty Ferry with his buds, Chappy Williams and the regulars at Stewpot's Bar. And on and on and on. Finally in utter frustration (ha, ha, ha) Alexander fumes, "F-you!. To me has bothered to read your delirium."

Ah, such sweet revenge! Bob Servant has done a right bloody good turn for all of us in keeping these con artists at bay and wasting their time.

There are seven more tales in the book. One wishes there were a few more. Bottom line on the old laugh-o-meter: five stars.

While I have a really good anti-spam appliance, this e-mail was received today (other than removing some details and the headers, this is exactly as it was sent):

My Dear


I am Antony. I am contacting you to be my project partner and stand as my

late Father foreign manager for transfer of US$12 million with 50kg gold. This fund is in a bank in Indonesia.

into your account for investment I intend to do in your country.

Please reply urgent to my private email <removed>@hotmail.com.

Please call me on Tel +277986<removed>


Sincerely

Antony

After reading Delete This at Your Peril: One Man's Hilarious Exchanges with Internet Spammers, by Bob Servant, it took a lot of control for me not to engage "Antony" in a dialog. I don't think that I would be able to reply in a manner befitting Bob Servant, but it could be fun.

Contents:
Introduction: Meet Bob Servant
Editor's Note: An Overview of Spam
Chapter 1: Lions, Gold and Confusion
Chapter 2: Bob and the Postie
Chapter 3: Alexandra, Bob and Champion
Chapter 4: Uncle Bob's African Adventure
Chapter 5: The Could Not Take Him, No Woman Could Tame Him
Chapter 6: From Lanzhou to Willy's Chinese Palace
Chapter 7: Bobby and Benjamin are New Friends
Chapter 8: Peter's Pots
Acknowledgements

This is a short (176 pages), extremely funny book that I wished was longer. My family thought that I was mad, as I was literally laughing out loud while reading this book.

Bob Servant has a lot of time on his hands. What he does with that time is to engage internet spammers in dialog. They want his financial information (bank routing numbers or to wire money to them) and Bob wants . . . well, he wants some authentic African recipes for his new restaurant, talking lions, gardening pots, and his Russian bride to get a job at the local pub. Each keep asking him for his money, and Bob not only ignores them, but writes some of the funniest e-mails you will ever read. The spammers, driven by money, keep the e-mails coming, until they usually sign off with an expletive after a really over-the-top e-mail from Bob. Or, unbelievably, they confess that they are trying to scam Bob out of his money. But the exchanges are, quite simply, some of the best comedy I have read in a while. Bob, from Broughty Ferry, Scotland, spins his friends, footballers, and local sights into his e-mails, which adds color to the manic adventures. For example, one person asked for Bob's personal information, only to receive an e-mail detailing Bob's problems with his postman. Bob has taken to playing pranks on Trevor, the postman, going so far as to build a hide in his garden. From this vantage point, Bob either shoots Trevor with an air rifle or "[chucks] a firework at his head." The pranks escalate to point where Bob asks the spammer for legal assistance. Smelling more cash, the spammer provides Bob with free legal advice and then tries to collect.

Each chapter is a new exchange with a different spammer. After reading Chapter 1 (a typical 419 spam), I didn't think that the stories could get any better. I was wrong. I was only disappointed when I finished this book. I realize that 176 pages is short, but this is a book that I wanted to last longer. It was that good. Adding to the e-mail exchanges, Bob includes some pictures that he has passed off as of himself. How the spammers use those pictures in subsequent e-mails is hilarious. Thanks to anti-spam software and appliances, many of these types of e-mails never get to your Inbox. However, if you ever wanted to "get even" with spammers, live vicariously through Bob Servant. The ride is wild and extremely funny.

Bob Servant, Delete This at Your Peril: One Man's Hilarious Exchanges with Internet Spammers (Skyhorse Publishing, 2008)

One of my rules of thumb is to take books whose subtitles contain value judgments with a grain of salt. The hilarious is never as hilarious as one would expect from the book's flashy title. I am happy to report that Delete This at Your Peril is that rara-est of avis-es: an exception to the rule. This slim book, which is composed almost completely of the promised email exchanges (with some footnoting from Neil Forsyth, author of Other Peoples' Money, who helped Bob whip the book into shape-- the footnotes are sometimes just as funny), is often the kind of laugh-out-loud gigglefest that will cause people to look askance at you on the bus. In each of the eight episodes here, Servant starts out by responding to a spammer as if he's seriously interested, then gets more and more absurd in his emails until they finally get frustrated and blow up at him. It's a wonderful hobby, and more people should do things like this-- and then write books about them. I have now become a huge Bob Servant fan, and as soon as he gives me his bank account details, I'll tell the world so. ****

Almost thirty years ago, William Donaldson, using the pen name Henry Root, produced a few books of letters he had written to important people or companies and the replies he had gotten. He wrote outlandish and silly suggestions, and it was funny to read the replies back, most of which took his letters seriously, which made them all the funnier. It was, however, a little mean; the respondents were probably in their respective public relations departments and had to take Root's inquiries seriously at the risk of offending a customer. Such tricking of well-meaning clerks was thus morally questionable, but no one ought to fret over the same sorts of tricks being played now thirty years later on e-mail spammers, who deserve to be the butt of any pranks anyone on the internet can devise. Scotsman Bob Servant is just the prankster for the job, and in _Delete This at Your Peril: One Man's Hilarious Exchanges with Internet Spammers_ (Skyhorse Publishing) he has presented to us eight of his recent skirmishes, e-mails back and forth that confuse, anger, and waste the time of the spammers who have attempted to get his money. Servant seems to be, in the tradition of Henry Root, a pseudonymic creation of Neil Forsyth, who has written the introduction to the book describing the author. Forsyth explains that Bob Servant lives in the Dundee suburb of Broughty Ferry and is "a former window cleaner and cheeseburger magnate" who pals around with Tommy Peanuts, Chappy Williams, and Frank Theplank ("Frank the Plank"), who are sometimes pulled into the e-mail action transcribed here. Servant's book is laugh-out-loud funny, as he takes his new e-pals on aberrant and bizarre twists of correspondence, and anyone who hates spam will find his efforts not just amusing but inspiring.

The title of the book comes from a 419 scammer who sent his first e-mail with that line as the subject. The mail was from "His Royal Highnest Jack Thomson" whose father "King Arawi of tribal land" was poisoned for his wealth, which his Highnest is ready to share with Bob Servant at the rate of 25%. "Good morning your Majesty," comes Bob's terse reply, "I want 30% and not a penny less." By the time Bob has readjusted his desire up to 40%, he is also requesting to be paid in lions, as cash is too dangerous, and helpfully suggests to his new friend Jack that Frank the Plank once saw a talking lion on the television, and could Jack get one of those? Jack says one of the lions talks a little, whereupon Bob pounces, "I'm not sure about a lion that only talks a little, I'd like one that isn't so shy, if possible?" Jack replies, "Now you are saying the lion has to talk? What is this madness? Send me the £1700 that we agreed imeediately." Bob is undeterred: "What does the lion say when it talks. I am just checking that it won't get me into any fights." After delaying a reply, Bob goes on to apologize, "Sorry about the delay. I was round at Frank's earlier and got stuck up a tree whilst chasing a snake, then fell off and banged my head on a chicken. You know what it's like." There are ten further volleys in this insane e-mail conversation before it ends, with no money going to Jack and no lions to Bob. The other exchanges collected here are just as silly. When his new Russian girlfriend expresses some doubts that he is being serious with her, he replies, "What kind of weirdo would spend all this time emailing you if they were not serious?"

Indeed. Weirdo or not, Bob Servant/ Neil Forsyth deserves our thanks for his efforts in the war against spam, and for making them available to us in this absurdly hilarious collection. If you hate spam, it will be all the funnier imagining the targets of Bob's furious nonsense scratching their heads at the meandering replies after their initial certainty that they have hooked a likely meal ticket. One final reply comes from Nigeria when it has eventually dawned on the spammer that no money is going to be forthcoming and a good deal of time has been spent reading nonsense: "YOU ARE A STUPID MAN". Not a chance of it; deranged, perhaps, but Bob Servant is far from stupid. It is a pleasure to see such hilarity marshaled against foes who so deserve it.

With the internet age has come all kinds of wonderful new convinces we now rely on every day. But with every plus comes a minus, and for most of us that minus is spam. Every morning, I hate wading through the massive amount of e-mails I get that I'm not even interested in reading.

One man decided to have some fun, however. And we get to share that fun because of this book. "Bob Servant" (and the observant person will pick up on that name faster than I did) decided to reply to some of his spam and see how long he could drag out the exchanges without the other side catching on or giving up. Here in, we get eight such exchanges and the results are hilarious.

Most of these e-mails start out all too familiar. There's the African native who needs Bob to get money out of the country. Theirs the Chinese company looking for a local person in Scotland to help with local payments. And there's Alexandria, who is more interested in Scottish men than her native Russians.

But what follows is anything but routine. It's hard to describe just how great this book because half the fun is watching how the events unfold. Twice, Bob turns a job offer into a potential job for the spammer when he pretends to be interested in buying a painting or a bunch of pots.

But my favorite exchanges cross the line into the absurd. Some of these involve wild animals and the postman. But that's all I'm going to say. Well, that and it reveals just how desperate the criminal spammers are to get the information they need. They are certainly persistent. And rather stupid themselves.

I've got to give the author credit. He has created a great world you real get involved in. In each exchange we get to see a different side of Bob and his friends. They provide half the fun.

While most of these exchanges are wonderful, I did think a couple went on too long. And they weren't quite the mostly clean stuff I normally enjoy reading. But that didn't dampen my enjoyment for long.

Ironically enough, I got this book because I replied to a spam e-mail from the author. And I'm glad I did. If you need a release from the constant attack of spam, this book is perfect for you.