Screaming at scam

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Dear TPH,
Recently I received an e-mail which said that Sony Ericsson was trying out an offer where I could win a free mobile phone by forwarding it to 8 or 20 people depending on the type of phone I wanted and sending a copy to the company. They said I will receive my phone within two weeks but I never did. How can I find out whether it was actually a true offer?
– H.J.

Dear H.J.,
Now that I decide to publish my answer in a national weekend newspaper, this little story is not our little secret anymore. But thank God for the anonymity because if your friends find out who you are and what you did, they are sure to bug you about it for the rest of your life! It was obviously a scam, and which is worse, you fell for one of the most famous and ridiculously silly scams on the Internet.

You are never going to get a phone for boldly forwarding the e-mail to your friends but you can still get your dignity back if you decide not to fall for silly scams like this in the future. I am sorry if you were actually planning to give away one of those phones as an 'avurudu gift' to someone special.

It will be really cool to go into the psychology of why people fall for this kind of scams – but I am not a psychologist. Perhaps when the potential reward is high and the risks are low, people can quite easily be convinced to 'give it a shot and see'. Then there are the e-mails that supposedly come from "an official in the Nigerian Petroleum Ministry" asking you to forward your bank details so that they could transfer millions of dollars into your account…

Forwarding the e-mail to 10 others who wouldn't beat you up for wasting their time with silly e-mails would be quite a 'low risk' operation compared to giving out your bank details; ATM PIN numbers and contact details, but they are all scams nevertheless and can be potentially very dangerous and almost always extremely risky.

I cannot over-emphasis the fact that you should never trust e-mails from people you do not know – particularly those who e-mail you with "Free Offers" or promising material rewards for petty favours – because they are either out to rob your money, or earn some money by selling your e-mail address to other spammers and scammers.

Now that you know what to do when you get an e-mail that could potentially be a scam, phishing tactic or just useless spam, tell your friends about what I told you and make sure this sort of thing doesn't happen again.
Best regards,
– TPH

PS: If you don't e-mail all your friends about what I just told you within the next 10 minutes, you will fall off a tall building today into a pile of rotting garbage and then be molested by a mad goat!