Gaetan Thomas

[FelicityA]

By replying to a suspect email you get genuine proof of the scam. Then this can be sent to their ISP or email provider and the account can be closed down. Although they simply create a new account, taking such action would likely benefit far more victims than trying to guess if it's a scam by the initial email and posting on LMH. If they try to send a phishing link in the followup email, this domain can be shut down and could prevent many people falling for the scam.

OK. We know now it is a scam. Do I have to prove it is a scam by taking time to reply to him and having him proceed with his scammy plans? I have his email address but he asks for a reply to another address. How do I report to gmail.com and live.com please and will live.com be interested if the initial email did not come from them? Will either be interested if I don't take time to reply to him and lead him to his doom?

[kevsboredagain]

By replying to a suspect email you get genuine proof of the scam. Then this can be sent to their ISP or email provider and the account can be closed down. Although they simply create a new account, taking such action would likely benefit far more victims than trying to guess if it's a scam by the initial email and posting on LMH. If they try to send a phishing link in the followup email, this domain can be shut down and could prevent many people falling for the scam.

OK. We know now it is a scam. Do I have to prove it is a scam by taking time to reply to him and having him proceed with his scammy plans? I have his email address but he asks for a reply to another address. How do I report to gmail.com and live.com please and will live.com be interested if the initial email did not come from them? Will either be interested if I don't take time to reply to him and lead him to his doom?

It all depends what you wish to achieve. If you are not willing to obtain the proof you would need, then yes, you're right, no ISP will do anything based on the fact that 2 people received the same suspect email. If you don't know if the sender email address is fake and could belong to an innocent victim, then you can't really do anything and the scammer will continue uninterrupted.

Imagine how far the scammer would get if every message he sent was replied to and reported by the recipient if a scam. Not very far at all.

[Casscat]

People here have a pretty well tuned scam detector. I think everyone who is unsure gives the enquirer the benefit of the doubt, but 99 times out of 100 the doesn't-seem-right-but-isn't-badly-enough-wrong enquiry turns out to be a scam anyway. There are thousands of such emails pinging their way around the universe every day. I don't have a protected email address from which to bait scammers and I certainly don't want to respond from my normal email addy and put my details out there into the scammers' handy address book. In a perfect world every scamming or phishing email would be personally investigated and diligently reported to the initiating ISP, but this world is not perfect and life is too short. If I get a spam email I report it to the rental listing site (and flag it here as a warning for others both within and outside the LMH community) but that's as far as I go.

[casacampello]

The dutch parts in this mail are not suspicious, that's because I speak dutch, so my email client is dutch.

However; the mail was sent to "bcc:" - and there was no reference whatsover to our property (mass mail probably).

The asked period is already (partially) booked as is visible on our online calendar.

And I just looked at my spam mail and found the poor chap has been waiting for a reply from me for over two weeks now. It seems he was planning a multi-venue holiday...

G

[AndrewH]

"Its will be my wife and I"

Whatever nationality, the scammer certainly knows his/her English grammar if not spelling ("Its"). Many, if not most, people would write "It will be my wife and me", which is so wrong.

[Casscat]

"Its will be my wife and I"

Whatever nationality, the scammer certainly knows his/her English grammar if not spelling ("Its"). Many, if not most, people would write "It will be my wife and me", which is so wrong.

"Its will be my wife and I" is totally wrong in respect of the 'its' so the presence of 'I' still makes it more likely the work of a translation app than a person.

[AndrewH]

"Its will be my wife and I" is totally wrong in respect of the 'its' so the presence of 'I' still makes it more likely the work of a translation app than a person.

That could be the answer. Perhaps this person doesn't have a word of English let alone syntax and grammar.

[greenbarn]

"Its will be my wife and I"

Whatever nationality, the scammer certainly knows his/her English grammar if not spelling ("Its"). Many, if not most, people would write "It will be my wife and me", which is so wrong.

In that sentence, "my wife and me" is correct.
"My wife and I will be coming......"
"It will be my wife and me coming......"

But it's still a scam!

[Ecosse]

A recent news report highlighted that many scammers deliberately use poor English to filter out savvy owners, leaving them with replies from, on average, more gullible owners. I suppose they hope if they haven't spotted the weird English, they won't spot the subsequent scam e-mail... perhaps while they don't mind wasting our time, they're not so keen to waste their own time!!

Kevsboredagain - I don't reply to any enquiries that I feel are obvious scams, simply because it highlights the address as 'live' to their group of phish-tastic friends. On any occasion that I have, when I've not been sure, or the likes, I've been bombarded with scammers in the few weeks after.

[Casscat]

In that sentence, "my wife and me" is correct.

Yes - I write for a living and didn't identify that

[AndrewH]

Hey, you professional writers and proponents of the English language, were you not taught that the verb "to be" takes a complement and not an object? "It will be my wife and I", which incidentally is a complete sentence without needing qualification, requires the use of the nominative "I". For another verb, you would of course use the accusative "me" as the object of the sentence as in: He/she/it saw my wife and me

If you don't agree, then perhaps the translation app. (if that is what was used) needs amending!

[PW in Polemi]

I was taught that you had to delete the extraneous parts of the sentence to check it for sense.
So in this instance, remove "my wife and" and see if the remaining "it will be I" still reads correctly ...

And before GB or any other LMHer with a vivid sense of humour pipes up, we wives are not extraneous at all

[greenbarn]

Hey, you professional writers and proponents of the English language, were you not taught that the verb "to be" takes a complement and not an object? "It will be my wife and I", which incidentally is a complete sentence without needing qualification, requires the use of the nominative "I". For another verb, you would of course use the accusative "me" as the object of the sentence as in: He/she/it saw my wife and me

If you don't agree, then perhaps the translation app. (if that is what was used) needs amending!

Oh spit, someone who knows what he's talking about. Or not - how would I know, I was never taught 'owt.

So how does this fit with the standard rule of thumb that to decide between "X and me" and "X and I" you just drop the X? Or is it a case of "It will be him and me" sounds right but is grammatically incorrect? Should it be "he and me", "him and I" or "he and I"? Or none of these? I fear the explanation would confound me, having just googled "complement" I need a lie down.

(Try this one as a fine example of getting it all confused - I once read a woman's explanation of how she came to live in a particular place: "My husband and I's love with Chipping Sodbury started.........")

Back on topic, it's a scam.

Edit - crossed with PW's post (and my wife is definitely not extraneous - she was born and raised on Planet Earth.)

[AndrewH]

I was taught that you had to delete the extraneous parts of the sentence to check it for sense.
So in this instance, remove "my wife and" and see if the remaining "it will be I" still reads correctly ...

And before GB or any other LMHer with a vivid sense of humour pipes up, we wives are not extraneous at all

You are not extraneous, PW, and don't smash the screen when I propose that in this particular context "my wife and I" IS correct, whereas "my wife and me" IS NOT, but only because it follows after the verb to "to be". With any other verb it would be "my wife and me".

I have been teaching my grandchildren that rule of thumb "extraneous" test, but they take it to excess and their emails to us sometimes make crazy reading.

"he and I" GB, but "him and me" sounds better. It's a changing thing and "him and me" is where the future lies.

[PW in Polemi]

And we native English speakers claim other languages to be difficult to learn

I'm not going to argue with somebody who appears to know far more about the rules as applicable to English language than me. And don't worry, I gave up smashing things in a fit of temper before I got to my teens (rather more than a decade or three ago ) simply because the items being smashed were what was closest to hand, i.e. my own stuff!

How's your Greek, Andrew? Poli kala or simply etsi ketsi? Plenty of grammar rules to apply - or ignore because as our teacher kept telling us "Yes, you made a mistake, but did the message get across?"