Wednesday, June 17, 2020

Dot Con, by James Veitch

Have you ever gotten and spam email and thought, "What if I reply?"  Probably not; you probably just delete those emails with annoyance.  James Veitch became famous for his TED talk and media appearances talking about his extended conversations with spammers.  In Dot Con: The Art of Scamming a Scammer he captures the transcripts of some of his exchanges with spammers.

Some of these conversations are laugh-out-loud funny.  It's amazing how long he can keep some of these scammers engaged.  Most of the examples are typical "you can get this great wealth if you first wire me some money" scams.  What makes the book fun is Veitch's goofy responses.  Do his correspondents fail to catch his sarcasm and humor because of the language differences?  Cultural differences?  Or are they simply blinded by their excitement that someone is finally writing them back?  Probably a combination of all of that.

Veitch is very funny, stringing them along as long as he can, and we get to see the results.  Maybe we can even be inspired to follow his example.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!

Get a taste of his humor with his TED talks: https://www.ted.com/speakers/james_veitch

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