On the 4th of September I emailed a Romanian Guide, that had been used and recommended on a post on Fodor's. He is one of 6 guides on the Bucharest Private Tour Guide Website.

Just now - the 7th of September, I have received an email - asking me to invest money and buy Romanian land - assuring me that this is not an email scam. It does not appear to be a form letter like the ones I have seen before.

I have the sinking feeling that this person that I emailed must have shared my email address with others.

Have any of you had anything like this happen after contacting individuals in Romania - or anywhere for that matter?

I have emailed countless individuals, hotels, tour guides etc from recommendations from Fodor's and other travel boards and have never had this experience.

To say that I am disappointed is such an understatement.

copy the email and go to www.scamomatic.com and enter it to see if it is a known scam.

Actually I have noticed that when I email several people (like B&B owners or hotel staff) in specific countries, I soon seem to get spam emails in the language of that country. It's a bit of a coincidence to get Danish spam, for example.

It's not necessarily the case that the guy sold your email. He might have insecure email or he might inadvertently have spyware on his machine that picks up email addresses.

(How strange Patrick. I was answering your post on Italy, while you were replying to this one.)

Thanks for the scanomatic.com. I have copied the email and the reply was that it was NOT a known scam.

At least that gave me something to do. I was so frustrated. I should just forget it.

Thanks, Patrick. With earthlink I got very very few spam messages, but I upgraded to embarq and now some are getting thru. They really do not have a good spam reporting system yet.


Hey HI BRAHMAMA!!

I'm not sure I know what the concern is. You didn't send money investing in the real estate did you?

I'm thinking spam is the price of the convenience of using email. I suppose we could use the phone or regular mail.

You have to weigh the costs and the benefits. You say that you have "emailed countless individuals. . ." before this and haven't gotten spam. Sounds like your doing pretty well.

Of course I meant "you're." I am an English major, after all.

jody, I don't know what you mean by "upgraded to embarq". Here our earthlink accounts, handled by our only phone company -- Sprint, which became Embarq -- suddenly REQUIRED converting our earthlink accounts to EMbarq. But you are right. Suddenly I'm plagued with spam which I had forgotten about with Earthlink.

And many of those old tricks no longer work. I used to enter particular words like "prescription" or "cialis" to block those spams, but now they say cia*lis or something so they go through. And I didn't get an important email from a friend because she happened to mention in it she stopped yesterday to pick up a prescription. GRRR.

Hey Jody!
Wassup? Got any trips planned? I guess you can see where we're planning to go!

PAtrick, I only said Upgraded because that was what it said on the website when they were transferring from earthlink. I emailed embarq and asked why so much spam was getting thru..the answer..they are working on it!!!!!Also when you report an email as Junk, they SO FAR aren't blocking them or putting them on a spammers list. I wish they'd ironed the bugs out before thay made the change!

Brahmama...we're off to Lonson and Paris for 3 weeks in Nov!

jody, that Embarq email is really difficult. I haven't yet figured out how you can even just block a single sender. They have an icon to click for junk, but that doesn't do anything except send the mail to trash so far as I can tell.

It took me a while to figure out how to copy and then paste in an email too, because when you are on the "new message" and you right click, you don't get the usual "paste" and other options. Finally found out you have to press Ctrl and V to copy into a message. Who would have guessed that?

Brahmama:

I have recommended an excellent guide service company to several Fodorites. I will e-mail you directly to avoid the possibility that info is being lifted
herein. I have been traveling Romania for decades, and a year ago I escorted 16 of my readers, and I hired a guide service that I had known about for years. They were excellent in every way, from providing a brand new Mercedes bus, complying with my lodging suggestions based on prior personal experiences, the itinerary I had designed, etc. I'll write you now.

Stu T.

Thanks,Stu. I looked for the email and couldn't find it, so then I waded through the server Spam and did indeed find it.

I appreciate the response.
Carol

Patrick, you make me feel so good! I thought it was just me being stupid!

Whyever would they "improve" and be so behind.? At least with old earthlink if something got thru you could report it as spam or abuse.