Friday, March 10, 2017

The Email Scam...Look Away!

There is always a trigger that compels me to write a new editorial. Today's trigger is because I received two scams; one by phone and one by email. So today I would like to address the latter.

An Email Scam is unsolicited emails that offer you the belief that you will receive something for nothing. This type of scam represents the classic phrase, "too good to be true". We all know what they say about that? If it is too good to be true then it probably is not. 

I actually know someone who is right in the middle of an email scam. The reason I say that is because I have warned him several times that it is a scam and he continues to email with this fella and send him money. If you haven't guessed yet, he has received nothing for his money. So far he is out nearly five hundred dollars and he still thinks he is going to receive $4.9 million from the other person.

Let me share an email I received today to show you what a typical scam email might look like. This is not the one received by my acquaintance above however, it could have been mostly plagiarized because that is how close they are alike:


Hello my dear friend,
How are you over there in your country or elsewhere? I believe you are fine and doing well. I hope my mail meets you in good health today. I am much delighted and privileged to contact you again, after all these time, it takes destiny and courage to remember good friends like you and at the same time, show gratitude to you despite circumstances that made us separate and disrupted our transaction, which ultimately did not work out as we had
projected then.
I am happy to inform you that I have successfully transferred the fund with the cooperation of a new partner from Netherlands. I use this opportunity to inform you that the transaction has finally worked out and I am contacting you to let you know that I left a bank draft check worth of $1.5 million for your compensation, I registered the bank draft check with DHL Courier company before leaving the country, and I instructed him to deliver the check to you once you contact him.
I will advise you now to contact DHL courier manager with your full delivery details so that they will process the delivery of your bank draft check to you immediately. Here is the contact info to contact DHL Manager.
NAME: Dr Albert Godwin
EMAIL: officedhl99@gmail.com
PHONE: +229 9826 4001
Please remember to fill your information as bellow when contacting Reverend Father John Mark ok.
Full Name:----------
Home Address:----------
Your country:----------
Your phone number:----------
Acopy of your I dentity:......
Let's take a look at some facts about the email. This is a typical "Phishing Scam" email designed to convince you to divulge personal information by phone or website which would make stealing your identity very simple.
Look at the grammar in general. There will be spelling errors, run-on sentences, broken English and other things that should just not seem right (DHL has Gmail email addresses?).
Other variations of this type of scam could ask you for a small fee to assist in the cost of getting a larger sum of money into your American bank. Another may ask you to visit a website to enter "secure" information. You may be asked to establish a separate bank account in a different bank for this purpose for security.
US-CERT makes a few simple recommendations to help you from becoming a scammers next victim. They include:
  • Filter spam.
    Don’t trust unsolicited email.
    Treat email attachments with caution.
    Don’t click links in email messages.
    Install antivirus software and keep it up to date.
    Install a personal firewall and keep it up to date.
    Configure your email client for security. 
Keep on the lookout for these types of email. If they show up in your inbox, mark them appropriately as SPAM so that your service provider can investigate and adjust. If they are delivered to your Spam folder already then no action is needed. If you are receiving these types of emails, do yourself a favor, dump them in SPAM and walk away.

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