Monday, February 21, 2011

Online Email Scams a multibillion dollar business or not? You decide

In the last two weeks, I received four scam emails in my yahoo spam folder. Every day spammers belch 200 billion spam emails from across the world. Currently India is rated no 1 and produces 10% of the overall spam. Typical spam topics involve Sexual Enhancers, Pharmacy, Loans, Replicas, Pornography, Software, Jobs/Academics, Degrees, Stocks, Casino, and Phishing. 10% or 20 billion of such emails are frauds or scams of some sort. They promise cheaper drugs (quality unknown), lottery wins, advance fee for some services like money transfer (actually money laundering in some cases), fake degrees, fake jobs and of course fool gullible men on dating sites. These 20 billion emails sent each day are mutated versions of campaigns based on similar themes. Due to the sheer volume, tracking and reporting such scams is not very effective but spam filters do reduce the threat significantly. User awareness is therefore a must.

Scamsters must earn well enough to sustain such large global operations as the income they make from victims helps fund further scam operations, amusement, opening and maintaining drug routes, and terrorism. They rarely get caught, and it is the victim who ends up facing losses or law enforcement agencies. These operations are run by criminal gangs and not individuals.

Scamsters prey on gullible people and their desires of riches and pleasure, winning trust through convincing tales and pretending to be lawyers, claims agents, bankers, law enforcement agents, basically any title to convince people they are legit. Once a person starts communicating with the scammer, a call agent at their back office operation marks the person using a dedicated cell phone on which the persons name and the assumed identity of the back office operator is noted.

It is difficult to trace such scamsters as the net offers anonymity, and they operate from countries in Africa. And if conned individuals, as in some cases do travel to these African countries to find the scamster or as part of the con, they end up dead or held for ransom. Most often individual lose money and end up on the wrong side of the law if they inadvertently end up transshipping goods or laundering money.

These scamsters also request for personal details to steal identity's, using personal banking, passport, driver's license, or credit card information to open accounts, to buy things and take loans in the victims name and not pay for them. These crimes leave the victim facing creditors and law enforcement.

Recommendation

You can identify scam emails by commonsense. Here are some tips.
1. Ask yourself why did you receive this email?
2. Ask yourself if there is anything like free money? Or are you doing something illegal?
3. Insert the subject of the email into GOOGLE’s search frame and read the response? It may quickly point you to similar scams reported by other people
4. Insert the subject of the email adding the word scam into GOOGLE’s search frame and read the response? It may quickly point you to similar scams reported by other people
5. Do not click on any links within the email?
6. Do not reply to the email even with incorrect information to find out if you can trace the scamsters? You may unknowingly reveal personal details?
7. Be suspicious if personal details are asked for
8. Do not visit any websites provided as links on these emails, they may result in malware being installed on your computer. Also remember that websites including lookalikes of legitimate websites can be hosted by anyone
9. Also remember, that webmail ids do not require identity verifications and many accounts in different names can be set up by a single individual

I have enclosed two fraud samples, I received this week. Try and use the tips above to sharpen your skills in fraud identification

SAMPLE 1 Fraud Email Detection Training

Australia Online National Lottery


From: OFFICE OF MR. ADAMS JONES
AUSTRALIA Online National Lottery
New South Wales SOUTH AUSTRALIA
P O Box 1010


BATCH NUMBER: 8056490902/188
WINNING NUMBER: KB8701/ LPRC

RE: AUSTRALIA LOTTERY PROMOTIONS AWARD 2011.

Attention: Beneficiary,

We are delighted to inform you that your e-mail address has won the sum of $250,000.00 Dollars in the ongoing New Year Promo 2011 Australia Lottery Bonanza.

HOW YOU WON:
HOW YOU WON:
All participant were selected through computer balloting system drawn form Nine hundred thousand E-mail addresses from Canada,Australia,United States, Asia, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Oceania as part of our international promotions program which is conducted every beginning of the year. This Lottery was promoted and sponsored by a conglomerate of some international companies as part of their social responsibility to the citizens in the communities where they have operational base.

HOW TO CLAIM YOUR PRIZE:

Your detail (e-mail address) falls within our African representative office as indicated in your play coupon and your prize of US$12,000.00 will be released to you through an accredited paying bank in Africa with the assistance of our Agent in Africa.Your are therefore advised to kindly send an application for prize release to our Fiduciary Agent on the below Information
HOW TO CLAIM YOUR PRIZE:

Your detail (e-mail address) falls within our African representative office as indicated in your play coupon and your prize of US$12,000.00 will be released to you through an accredited paying bank in Africa with the assistance of our Agent in Africa.Your are therefore advised to kindly send an application for prize release to our Fiduciary Agent on the below Information:

Barrister Mark henry,
Phone+266 (changed)
Email: xx@abc.com (changed)

Enclose the following in your application:
1.Your full names,
2.Your full contact Address
3.Your Telephone
4.Your age
5.Current occupation
6.Your Payment code : AU/WIN-132/2010-AFR

For security reasons, we advice all winners to keep this information confidential from the public until your prize is processed and released to you. This is part of our security protocol to avoid double claiming and unwarranted taking advantages of this program by non-participant or the official personnel.

YOUR RESPONSE MUST BE SENT TO OUR AGENT IN AFRICA ON THE FOLLOWING
E-MAIL: xx@abc.com (changed) ANY RESPONSE SENT BACK TO US WILL
NOT BE PROCESSED.

Accept our congratulations.

Best Regards

MR. ADAMS JONES
(ANNOUNCER
___________________________________________________________________________________
SAMPLE 2 Email Detection Training

FROM THE DESK OF MR.MOHAMED ISSAKA.
NO #24 AHAJI KABRIU CRESCENT,
BURKINA FASO, OUAGADOUGOU,
WEST AFRICA.
Email.(xx@abc.com changed)

I am Mr. Mohamed Issaka, an auditor with African Development Bank (ADB). There was an account opened in this bank in1998 and since 2000 nobody has operated on this account again. After going through some old files in the records, I discovered that if I do not remit this money out urgently, this funds will go down the drains, into the hands of either the board of directors of this bank or the funds may eventually be discovered by the government as a dormant fund in the forth coming audit by the Nations auditors.

They will confiscate or send it into the government's treasury account. The question now is who is the government and where is the treasury? They are human beings like you and I. The owner of this account is Mr Morris Thompson, a foreigner, and a miner at Kruger gold co, a geologist by profession and he died in 2000. No other person knows about this account or any thing concerning it, the account has no other beneficiary and my investigation proved to me as well that his company does not know anything about this account.

The amount involved is Ten Million, Five Hundred and thirty Thousand United States Dollars.10,530.000.00. I am only contacting you as a foreigner because this money cannot be approved to a local bank account here, but can only be approved to any foreign account and foreign beneficiary because the money is in US dollars and the real owner of the account is Mr Morris Thompson, he is a foreigner too. I only got your contact address from my secretary who operates computer, with believe in God that you will never let me down in this business so that I will inform you the next step to take immediately.

I need your full co-operation to make this work fine because the management is ready to approve this payment to any foreigner, who has correct information of this account, which I will give to you later, if you will be able to handle such amount in strictest confidence and trust according to my instructions and advice for our mutual benefit because this opportunity will never come again in our life. With my position now in the office, I can transfer this money to any foreigner's reliable account, which you can provide with assurance that this money will be intact pending my physical arrival in your country for sharing and investment.

I will also use my position and influence to effect legal approvals for onward transfer of this money to your account with appropriate clearance documents from the ministries and foreign exchange department. But, it will only cost us small money as to procure such back up documents from the ministries in-concern. Your earliest response to this letter will be appreciated.

Reply via my private email l(xx@abc.com).

Please call me as soon as you read this mail on my private telephone(+226 )

I look forward to your earliest reply.

Yours Friendly,
Mr. Mohamed Issaka.

No comments:

Post a Comment