Address Harvesting Scam

I got an email from a close friend of mine that had the following subject.

Forward this message to any 10 of your friends and you will get free bonuses worth Rs. 5,995/-

The bonuses might have been real, because all the said bonuses were eBooks such as the "Hacker's Black Book", "100 Google Hacks", ".NET codes" etc. and were promised to be sent as soon as the messages were sent.

I guess you are thinking how the person issuing the bonuses can track the forwards being sent. Thats easy if you fall for it, the email goes like this...

Its simple. To get your free bonuses worth Rs. 5,995/-, all you need to do is forward this message to any 10 of your friends (write their email in "To" field) and as 11th email, write our address, vyom.gifts@gmail.com. We will send you free bonuses worth Rs. 5,995 (to see your bonuses, scroll down this mail.) Please note that we check all the mails and your free bonus request will be processed only when you refer 10 of your friends.

In turn, your friends can also forward this mail and get all the bonuses.... its a great win-win game!

So now, you have sent an email having 10 legitimate email addresses and with a Carbon Copy to the scammer. The scammer can turn into a spammer any time! And what a way to collect email addresses. After a few hours after getting this forward from my friend, Some one totally unrelated to me sent me a copy. She got it from the copy that my friend sent and just copy-pasted the addresses again. Damn.

The also have an FAQ in their mail and one of them goes like this!

3. My friends might be annoyed by this mail.
A. No. Your friends will thank you for this! Believe me. They will love all the free bonuses, because they will also get these, absolutely free of cost. Its a win-win game. So, forward this mail now to 10 of your friends.

We try our best to stay away from the inevitable spam that is likely to be generated by signing up for newsletters at websites who do not prominently display their privacy policy by not registering our email addresses with them. And our friends do the stupid part and help the spammers in their adress harvesting methods by following such lowsy instructions. Damn.