Should I reply to spam emails?

[TakingARiskOrNot]

I seem to be receiving a lot of "you have £5 million inheritance waiting for you" type emails in my junk mail. Usually I ignore or delete.

Some of you may have seen the comedian Joe Lycett who replies to these spammers often with funny results.

I was thinking of replying for my own amusement (obvs not giving any personal details/ financial info) but is this a really bad idea? What pitfalls haven't I thought of? Could they identify me via my IP address and track me down with machetes?!

They'll know it's an active email address and use it again

They'll know they've got a definite address and think "ooh we got a live one here". Then bombard you with a hundredfold more spam. And sell on your details to yet more spammers. Till you wake up one morning with 76,467,268,811,106,732 unread emails in your inbox

to that ted talk. Don't think I could be half as funny but i'm tempted to set up a new email to try.

Id not use a personal email. One you'll get swamped , two you want to remain anonymous , remember these are crooks with no morals.

Set up a separate gmail account and fire off a reply from there.
Invent a story for your character

People call this scambaiting

Have a look at sites like 419 eater

forum.419eater.com/forum/

I've done this a few times with fake email addresses. It's pretty funny.