SpamWatch for NGOs Just noting a new (to us) spam phenomenon we've started picking up on the CW email account. We've had two mails this week specifically trying to con money out of NGOs. One of these is a variant on the 'My late father Sani Abacha left £50 million in a secret bank account...send us your bank details and we'll give you some.' scam (which we get about a hundred of per week). It starts: This is to notify you that you have been choosen By the Board of Trustees of the Action Aid (NGO uk) as one of the final Recepients of a Cash Grant/Donation Economic growth and a poverty alleviation scheme... The grammar and spelling don't get any better. Apparently Action Aid just got £100 million, which would be news to them, and want to give us £850,000. This one's easy enough to spot. The second scam was a bit more sophisticated: purportedly from the 'Overseas Development Foundation' it promotes, '...the 4th International NGO/CBO Summit: - "The 21st Century&The Environmental Issues" that will bring together 314 representatives of NGOs/CBOs from all over the world.' It goes on in detail about the conference (in New York), then invites the recipient organisation to send three delegates, expenses-paid. There's even the detail, 'In order to foster gender balance, we would appreciate if your delegation contains a female participant.' Now, CW does actually occasionally get this kind of invitation, though not generally from groups we've never heard of, but the next paragraph gave it away: please send $230 registration fee per delegate. Small, subtle, none of the promised millions of the usual scam, but someone out there is making a nice living out of this. A quick websearch found this particular scam has been going since 2002, mainly targetting African NGOs., but it seems to be spreading. And we should have noticed sooner - the email comes up with 'oversace developpement foundation' as the sender. Try harder next time, guys.