Google Plus Me Google Plus You

Google Plus Me Google Plus You ©

By Michael Casey

The thing about the Internet is that strange things can and do happen, if it can happen it will happen. Murphy’s Law or Sod’s Law is the fancy name for it. I did work in computer rooms for 25 years or so, which means I know all about crashes and disasters. When I started back in 1978, before I had any white hair, computers were as big as washing machines and you had tape decks as big as wardrobes.

So that was the past, before everybody had a PC, before mobile phones were invented, and before a mobile phone only slightly bigger than a pack of fags, fags means cigarettes in England by the way,  before a mobile could be used to surf the  Internet. I can remember when nobody used the words surf the Internet. You would have been thinking about the Beach Boys if anybody said surf.

So now we all use the internet and email, I’ve been using email on a daily basis since 1999 or maybe a couple of years before that, so that’s 16 years plus. Now we have Google Plus it’s a more confusing version of Facebook, and there is Linkedin which is supposed to be posh Facebook for business people. So the Internet connects people, it also allows scammers to send you rubbish.

A stolen image is used as a front, my own image might be used somewhere. Then a stolen name or even a variant of the real name that goes with the picture is added. Then the scammer is in business, they friend you or add you to their circle. Then the fun begins. You are offered sex, drugs and rock and roll. All kinds of everything, whatever they think will catch you.

We all have received scam emails, but scamming via Facebook or Linkedin or Google Plus, is more fun for them. I delete everything that does not have a decent subject line, but with social media they are already in your front room so to speak. They’ll strike up a conversation, they are Barrister this or Barrister that, they are a holy person, a good christian or muslim or whatever, and then in the very next sentence they want you to do money laundering for them.

$10,000,000 to share with you. They forget they are sending emails to England and still say dollars or euros, which proves the mass produced nature of their scams, they could not be bothered to change the currency. Oh I forgot they are dying of cancer too, in reality they are in a swanky hotel, better than James Bond’s hotels.

On social media they can watch your posts and stalk you, pretend this and pretend that. Comment on and upvote your posts. They are an Australian mining magnate who wants to give you money. In this case I had never even heard of her name, I googled it and smiled, yet another scamming ploy. Why would a billionaire want to give me money, or they are a senior military figure, a general even….

The reality is, they are all full of BS as the Americans say, just trying to con anybody. Just sent us 100dollars and that will cover expenses and in return we will send you $10,000,000 by return of post. Sadly the scammers trick some people into doing this. Me I don’t need money, Health and an end to pain  is all I desire. Though if any billionaires are out there a nice bigger house would be nice. Rupert Murdoch may be in England for the rugby on Saturday so I assume he’ll email or leave a message on my Google Plus. And of course it really will be him. He’ll publish my books and use my radio stories too, www.michaelgcasey.typepad.com  

And if I believed that then I’d believe in Fairies, though I do believe in Fairies I do I do, as the film said. So what should I advise you all? Don’t believe anything you find on the Internet. Yes there are a few nice people, I have stumbled over one or two, but the majority are hoaxers and scammers. It may just be I am a magnet for rubbish, or the pain I’ve been having these past two years has made me more cynical, but as they used to say on Hill Street Blues, be careful out there.