Internet Scam
Posted 16th August 2008 at 01:42 PM by Asher
The internet is filled with scams - one of which involves you receiving an email with a great offer of a large sum of money.
All of these sound great and can even look pretty authentic. Some emails go the extra mile by owning a website and they include a website link in the email. Clicking on the website link provided will bring you to a very professionally done website with pictures of cars or whatever they're selling, of a building with the same logo that’s in the email on it.
Usually, these emails or letters will say that you’ve won a lucky draw, a lottery, someone died and left a huge sum of money or some inheritance. In any case, it has to do with money. All of this was done in an attempt to scam my money and your money!
What can you do? How do you know if any of these emails that are supposedly meant to give you a huge sum of money are authentic or scammers? Well, there are a few things you can do and here’s what I recommend.
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Recommendation #1:
Do a Search using part of the email
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Usually, the scammers will fabricate a very authentic looking email and send it to people. They know that sending to one person is a hit and run whereas sending to thousands and thousands of people will give them a better chance of getting just one person falling for their schemes.
These email scams are not new - they’ve been around since the 1980’s. They are classified as 419 Scam Letters or Frauds. When you receive any of these emails or even physical letters, do a search on any major search engine using a sentence from the mail that has been sent. You will very likely come up with search results that have your exact sentences in websites that are talking about these 419 scammers.
So, you can safely assume that the letter is 100% fake.
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Recommendation #2:
Introducing the Trash Bin
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Simply delete the emails or letters and forget about it. But what if they keep sending you letters after letters of the same thing? You can keep deleting them, categorise them in spam so they end up in your junk mail. What else can you do?
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Recommendation #3:
Go to the cops
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Go to the authorities on this. I don’t mean you go look for your local police officer. What you can do is send an email to the hosting company of the scamming email. For example, if you click on “REPLY” in the email, the reply would usually have an address that looks something like “ImAScammer@Email.com“.
Delete the name that’s before the @ sign (in this example, ImAScammer) and then key in the word abuse so it looks like “abuse@Email.com“. What happens now is that you will send an email with the contents of the scammer’s mail to the abuse section of the company. What the company will do (or should do) is delete the account.
If the company’s name is like “@hotmail.co.uk” or “@yahoo.co.uk”, you might get a bounce back email. Erase the “.co.uk” and replace it with “.com”. That should solve the problem. Once you’ve sent the email, just go on ahead and delete the scammers mail.
Unfortunately, the sad thing is, people *still* do fall for such scams. So, whenever you know of a friend or family member who is new to the internet and has opened an email account, do him/her a favour by educating him/her about such scams.
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Find more empowering entries like this at Asher's blog at MoreMoneyToSpend.com
All of these sound great and can even look pretty authentic. Some emails go the extra mile by owning a website and they include a website link in the email. Clicking on the website link provided will bring you to a very professionally done website with pictures of cars or whatever they're selling, of a building with the same logo that’s in the email on it.
Usually, these emails or letters will say that you’ve won a lucky draw, a lottery, someone died and left a huge sum of money or some inheritance. In any case, it has to do with money. All of this was done in an attempt to scam my money and your money!
What can you do? How do you know if any of these emails that are supposedly meant to give you a huge sum of money are authentic or scammers? Well, there are a few things you can do and here’s what I recommend.
**************************************************
Recommendation #1:
Do a Search using part of the email
**************************************************
Usually, the scammers will fabricate a very authentic looking email and send it to people. They know that sending to one person is a hit and run whereas sending to thousands and thousands of people will give them a better chance of getting just one person falling for their schemes.
These email scams are not new - they’ve been around since the 1980’s. They are classified as 419 Scam Letters or Frauds. When you receive any of these emails or even physical letters, do a search on any major search engine using a sentence from the mail that has been sent. You will very likely come up with search results that have your exact sentences in websites that are talking about these 419 scammers.
So, you can safely assume that the letter is 100% fake.
**************************************************
Recommendation #2:
Introducing the Trash Bin
**************************************************
Simply delete the emails or letters and forget about it. But what if they keep sending you letters after letters of the same thing? You can keep deleting them, categorise them in spam so they end up in your junk mail. What else can you do?
**************************************************
Recommendation #3:
Go to the cops
**************************************************
Go to the authorities on this. I don’t mean you go look for your local police officer. What you can do is send an email to the hosting company of the scamming email. For example, if you click on “REPLY” in the email, the reply would usually have an address that looks something like “ImAScammer@Email.com“.
Delete the name that’s before the @ sign (in this example, ImAScammer) and then key in the word abuse so it looks like “abuse@Email.com“. What happens now is that you will send an email with the contents of the scammer’s mail to the abuse section of the company. What the company will do (or should do) is delete the account.
If the company’s name is like “@hotmail.co.uk” or “@yahoo.co.uk”, you might get a bounce back email. Erase the “.co.uk” and replace it with “.com”. That should solve the problem. Once you’ve sent the email, just go on ahead and delete the scammers mail.
Unfortunately, the sad thing is, people *still* do fall for such scams. So, whenever you know of a friend or family member who is new to the internet and has opened an email account, do him/her a favour by educating him/her about such scams.
=====
Find more empowering entries like this at Asher's blog at MoreMoneyToSpend.com
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