Shirley:

You should know the world had bad people, and some of them make their way to glocals. When we catch them we remove them (as was the case here), but still: when dealing with someone you don't know, be careful. That's about it...(-;

Nir, glocals admin

There are some iffy ones out there, so best be wary of any message in pidgin, especially when a reply to a post of yours asks several questions but tells you nothing in return, e.g.:

“How much is?”

“Where you live?”

“I come 6 today”,

etc.

R.

"the grammar and spelling were very poor"

oh the irony of criticising someones spelling yet having several mistakes in your own mail

..hanging my head in shame Parker K...how right you are....how, on this earth, could i have spelt except with cc?... will slow down and take more care next time, other mistakes noted....i have noticed as my french improves, my english worsens..where will it all end? will i eventually become completely illiterate? 

Dear Shirley:

I sympathize.  Maintaining one’s standards isn’t easy when struggling to cope with more than one language, but do you think you could try to use capital letters as you were surely taught?  “I” for example or “F” for French, “E” for English,  “W” for “Will” at the beginning of a sentence ?

It could help to counteract the illiteracy you seem to fear.

Thank you for reading my plea and good luck.

Ritchie

Dear Richie,

Your plea has been read.

I've absorbed all that you've said.

Now, i'm going to bed.

To rest my weary head.

(Then maybe i'll remember to use my capitals).

A very good night to you Richie

It might have been easier to just keep chatting with the scammer

But not so creative.

R.

Scammer pidgin is improving these days, especially since they installed spell-checkers.  Another annoying improvement is that many of them have learned to change case.  I preferred the old days when all the scammers wrote in CAPITAL LETTERS.  Sometimes it's hard to spot them, and Shirley's scammer letter is an example of that.

For my money, the message Shirley received shrieks “scam”.  It’s not just the spelling or the syntax, it’s the needless repetition that gives the author away -- and no amount of spell-checking can remedy that, thank the Lord.  Fortunately, most scammers are blissfully unaware of their linguistic shortcomings.

Nevertheless, there is a risk that someone who is less than proficient in a given language may not spot the paucity of the content – but if that person has had at least an introduction to the often derided art of parsing, the risk of falling for a con man’s tale should be limited.

In days gone by, children used to be told “think before you speak”.  Perhaps that should now be updated to “think before you thumb”.

R.

I'm relatively new to this glocals thing so I'm still learning about best practices.

But right now, my standard is that I will send friend requests to and accept friend requests from people I have actually met at an event. It means I already have some sense of who they are, how they behave (or not. I'm not saying that misbehaviour will get you crossed off my list!) etc.

This is pretty much the same approach I take to Facebook.

I've met Anura S in-person, and I can verify that he's just a spambot seeking your FB login details.

Seeing as how he's already infiltrated this thread, you should private message me with your a/s/l and relevant bank details, including passwords, in order that I may inoculate you from Nigerian prince phishing (n.b., only IBAN are accepted, no BIC or Swift - too unreliable).

:P