Ever seen those TV ads which promise a huge salary upon completion of a poxy online course? While watching TV last night I saw one of these ads and thought I would try it for a laugh.

I logged-on to the website for more details. One of the things you must do is complete an online assessment to check your “suitability” for this new high-flying career in the brave new world of Information Technology. I duly completed the 40-question “evaluation” and scored 38. The quiz itself was geared exclusively around providing support for novice  Windows PC users. There were some really bizarre questions though: what sort of file systems are available at install time of Windows 98? WTF? Windows 98 support from Microsoft ended nearly a year ago!

Anyway, once you’d scored more than a certain score (presumably 1), you were sent through to a page advertising their road-shows, which were scattered about the country, which is where I left things.

Or so I thought. The following morning (at 10:25, presumably once the girl in the office got round to it) I received an e-mail saying “well done, you’ve passed the assessment, click here to book an appointment” etc. The content of the e-mail wasn’t the problem though. It was the fact that the message was Cc’d to a collection of people who had obviously all done the same as me. There were a couple of obviously fake e-mail addresses (such as “pope@vatican.com”), but there were many that looked pretty genuine accounts.

I wasn’t particularly happy about this, so sent back the following note to the sender: 

Isn’t that a bit, well, crap, sending out e-mails with everyone’s e-mail address on display? While it is fun to imagine the Pope (pope@vatican.com) would wish to take up some basic training for a helpdesk career, should the plans with His Holiness not go as planned, I’m guessing that may be someone telling a little fib.

Computer training tip #1: use “Bcc” if you must do this – at least all the e-mail addresses will remain private. £50 please!