What would you make of the following message in your inbox, Sorry, should be in Relationships but am in too much of a hurry to find it.

[2sugars]

i loved your profile and I think we can be friends.

just hit me up on msn messenger i am [email protected]

???

2sugars...

Either
(a) this is spam, or
(b) this jane woman (so popular she needs to have a new email address every day) is flirting not just with your DH but with thousands of other people worldwide, including several mumsnetters, or
(c) through some bizarre quantum effect thousands of unrelated women named jane are coincidentally propositioning thousands of people worldwide using the exact same form of words and virtually identical email addresses.

If you really want to believe it's option (c), then go ahead.

Tilly, it's unlikely he's worked out how to get his own email addy. Unlikely, but not impossible. So why would they have come to me?

P&L, thank you I'll go with (c) and enjoy the rest of my day.

Sorry, meant go with (a) but (c) was the one that made me laugh.

Just in case, would you advise forwarding it to your mum, and telling her not to open it? He is quite possibly a total shit, in which case it would be useful to have before he deletes it.

His PC is password protected, mine isn't, so he could quite easily do that.

NO!

It's spam.

Even if he is a total shit... even if he has gold member accounts on every porn site in existence... even if he is shagging every woman in your town (and obviously I hope he isn't)... THIS PARTICULAR message is just spam. Nothing will be gained by saving it in any form whatsoever.

Don;t forward it!! IT IS SPAM, please believe everyone else and just delete it

P&L, your last message made a particularly shitty morning bearable

spam

T'is spam

It's spam - I get loads offering me viagra and penis extensions, and I'm a girl! Delete and stop worrying!

The message itself is so neutral that it's blindingly obviously spam. I get shitloads of stuff like this (along with offers to big up or otherwise turbocharge my non-existent willy). Don't worry about it, just delete it.

The other thing you might want to do is change your e-mail address. Once the address gets on the spamming lists you just get more and more of them. Mine succumed recently (big penises, meeting girls and watches for some reason) and although they all go into spam (I have a yahoo account) I'll probably need to change soon. dh (who is a computer geek) says it's just a matter of time before they get you, so don't feel targeted in any way. Oh, and another recommendation for AVG, also if you want to keep your PCs safer, then installing a router (like for wireless access) is a good idea too.

spam

Spam. Jane propositioned me the other day as well and I don't even use MSN.

I had the same e-mail.... Ignore it.

I get hundreds though (well 10 a day) and have never replied to any of them....

They fall into these categories....

Viagra
Rolexes
Someone who would like to meet me (aka Jane)
Someone from Nigeria wanting me to move 6 trillion dollars for them
Someone wanting to sell me the names of all doctors/dentists in America
Telling me I've won the millionaire's lottery

And to add to the pot I travel a bit and have logged on to pcs in Germany, France and China - so I now get them all in English, German, Chinese and French!

ITS ALL SPAM!

2Sugars. Definitely spam. And re your DH password protecting his PC -- I have done the same on my laptop, but only because I am currently organising a big surprise b'day party for my DH and obviously don't want him seeing the invite list, email responses, etc. Sometimes these things can be entirely innocent!

Just want to add to fymandbean's regular spam list: a lot of spam from a different British high street branch every day, with the bank's logo as part of the email, and part of the bank's website as part of the email address so it really looks authentic, asking me to go here (again, authentic looking website address) and confirm my log-in details for internet banking. If the first one had come from my bank (as later ones did) I wonder how much I'd have believed it, they do look authentic. But the first one I got came from Barclays, then another bank I wasn't with, so I was used to them when mine rolled around.