Book info

• Title Dot Con
• Author James Veitch
• Year 2015
• Genre Non-fiction

The Nigerian prince eager to fork over his inheritance, the family friend stranded unexpectedly in Norway, the lonely Russian beauty looking for love... they spam our inboxes with their hapless pleas for help, money, and your social security number. In Dot Con, Veitch finally answers the question: what would happen if you replied? Suspicious emails pop up in our inboxes and our first instinct is to delete unopened. But what if you responded to the deposed princess begging for money in your Gmail? Veitch dives into the underbelly of our absurd email scam culture, playing the scammers at their own game, and these are the surprising, bizarre, and hilarious results.

Thoughts

This is a quick and easy book to read, simply a list of email correspondence as our protagonist James replies to those trying to scam him out of money. A collection of some of the best conversations gathered over two years, as we start to see more of how the scams work and, more importantly, why they don’t!

The concept of replying to idiot email spammers isn’t new, but it’s almost always amusing. For a start, most people think it’s slightly crazy that spam ever actually works, so it’s interesting to see the reactions of the perpetrators when they think they’ve got a bite. It’s also interesting to see just how long some will hang on in the hopes they get some money out of it, particularly when it starts to be obvious that James is on to them.

Overall, it’s not a groundbreaking book, but it’s a bit of fun surrounding a subject that is otherwise intensely irritating.

Rating: 3 / 5