Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Was woken a little too early by the doorbell (didn't get downstairs quickly enough to find out who it was, but admittedly didn't try very hard). The sky is bright and fluffy, there's a fraction of an inch of snow on the rooftops, and I'm trying to convince myself I feel awake enough to deal with the world. I figure I'll start gradually, with email.

Of course, some email is pretty easy to decide how to deal with:

Dear PayPal.com Member,

We here at PayPal.com are pleased to announce that we have a special New Year offer for you! If you currently have an account with PayPal then you will be eligible to receive a terrific prize from PayPal.com for the New Year. For a limited time only PayPal is offering to add 10 percent of the total balance in your PayPal account to your account and all you have to do is register yourself within the next five business days with our application (see attachment)!

If at this time you do not have a PayPal account of your own you can also register yourself with our secure application and get this great New Year bonus! [...]

That's not all! If you resend this letter (with its attachment) to all of your friends you may be eligible to receive another New Year bonus [...]

Uh ... yeah. Sure. First, you want me to open and execute a program sent as an attachment. Second, you don't even know for sure whether I have a PayPal account. Third, you want me to spread this for you. (Fourth, for folks who do have a PayPal account and are thus familiar with actual mail from PayPal, the authentic messages greet users by name, not with, "Dear PayPal.com Member".) Gee, I don't even have to check the headers to see where it really came from, do I? The only important detail is that it certainly didn't come from PayPal.

It's a lot better than the last few of these I've seen (and gotten dozens of copies of each of), appealing to greed this time. The others appeal to fear-of-missing-deadlines instead, claiming that your account is about to expire if not renewed, or that additional verification is needed, or some such. But I wonder whether the second and third paragraphs will tip off more people than they lure in.

Sadly, somebody clueless or careless is going to make it worth this scammer's while. Feh.