After posting my blog about the assassination scam, it occurred to me that some people might not take receiving a death threat so well. Believing that the best way to combat scams is to publicise them as widely as possible, I forwarded the offending mail to The Register. They thought it worthy of an article, and kindly linked back to my original post.
Since then I have heard nothing more from Gladlord Mohammed or his Yemeni hit squad, but according to Google Analytics, traffic to this blog has leapt by over 7000%. Amazing what you can do from a very, very small base. Their report also shows three visits from Yemen. (I would like to assure any Yemeni readers that I never for a moment believed that the scamster was really from Yemen.)
It was also interesting watching how the story spread across the web. At the start of the day a Google search for "Gladlord Mohammed" came up with just two hits: my blog and a site for people who like to wind up scamsters. Then the Reg article showed up. After that several other news sites took up the story, mostly crediting The Register, though not all.
This humble blog will probably never be so popular again. When I started it last year, little did I think that it would be a death threat that attracted any serious readership. At least it wasn't an obituary notice.
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