Yes, I know stupid is spelled with a U and not two Os, but email scammers don’t and the post title was addressed to them. With that out of the way, I’m somewhat embarrassed to say that I have an AOL account. It’s my tether back to the 1990’s when I (along with everyone else) actually used AOL. Don’t worry though, i just keep the (now free) email address alive, but don’t actually use it or AOL for anything.

For years AOL sent out emails ad nauseam saying that any official correspondence from them will have a blue envelope icon in your inbox. The purpose was so that anyone who doesn’t have their head in the game when it comes to email scams would be able to easily spot fraudulent emails.  This never made any sense to me because in my experience, they’ve always been easy to spot, even for me a dumb kid of two Latin American immigrants. Nonetheless, there must be people who either don’t watch enough TV or spend too much time smoking something illegal that still can’t spot the scams.

Here’s an edited copy of the email I received with my comments in orange, hopefully it will provide people with a droplet of common sense.

I was originally worried about scammers using my tips to improve their email scams, but lets be honest, they won’t understand anyways. Let it be a guide of common sense things to look for (in an email that should seem like a scam to anyone with half a brain) before sending them your credit card or banking info.

Ciao,
Juan Luis