e-Mail fraud
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e-Mail fraud
e-Mail spoofing | Phishing | Scam baiting
Fraud has existed perhaps as long or longer than money. Any new
sociological change can engender new forms of fraud, or other crime.
Almost as soon as e-mail became widely used, it began to be used to
defraud people via E-mail fraud. E-mail fraud can take the form of a
"con game" or scam. Confidence tricks tend to exploit the inherent greed
and dishonesty of their victims: the prospect of a 'bargain' or
'something for nothing' can be very tempting. E-mail fraud, as with
other 'bunco schemes' relies on naive individuals who put their confidence in
get-rich-quick schemes such as 'too good to be true' investments or
offers to sell popular items at 'impossibly low' prices. Many people
have lost their life savings due to fraud.
Forms of e-mail fraud
Spoofing
E-mail sent from someone pretending to be someone else is known as spoofing.
Spoofing may take place in a number of ways. Common to all of them is that
the actual sender's name and the origin of the message are concealed or masked
from the recipient. Many, if not most, instances of e-mail fraud use at least
minimal spoofing, as most frauds are clearly criminal acts. Criminals typically
try to avoid easy traceability.
Fishing for data
Some spoof messages purport to be from an existing company, perhaps one with
which the intended victim already has a business relationship. The 'bait' in
this instance may appear to be a message from 'the fraud department' of, for
example, the victim's bank, which asks the customer to: "confirm their
information"; "log in to their account"; "create a new password", or similar
requests. If the 'fish' takes the 'bait', they are 'hooked' -- their account
information is now in the hands of the
con man, to
do with as they wish. See
Phishing.
Bogus offers
E-mail solicitations to purchase goods or services may be instances of
attempted fraud. The fraudulent offer typically features a popular item or
service, at a drastically reduced price.
Items may be offered in advance of their actual availability, for instance,
the latest video game may be offered prior to its release, but at a similar
price to a normal sale. In this case, the 'greed factor' is the desire to get
something that nobody else has, and before everyone else can get it, rather than
a reduction in price. Of course, the item is never delivered, as it was not a
legitimate offer in the first place.
Such an offer may even be no more than
an attempt to
obtain the victim's credit card information, with the intent of using the
information to fraudulently obtain goods or services, paid for by the hapless
victim, who may not know they were scammed until their credit card has been
"used up".
Requests for help
The 'request for help' type of e-mail fraud takes this form. An e-mail is
sent requesting help in some way, but including a 'hook' such as a large amount
of money, a treasure, or some artifact of supposedly great value.
This type of scam has existed at least since the
Renaissance, as the 'Spanish Prisoner/Turkish Prisoner scam. This scheme, in its original form,has the
con man in correspondence with a wealthy person who has been imprisoned under a
false identity, and is relying on the confidence artist to raise money to secure
his release. The victim is 'allowed' to supply money, expecting a generous
reward when the prisoner returns. The confidence artist claims to have chosen
the
mark, (victim) for their reputation for honesty.
This confidence trick is similar to the face-to-face con, known as the
Stranger With a Kind Face which is the likely origin of the vaudevillian routine known as The Stranger With a Kind Face, a.k.a. "Niagara
Falls", a.k.a. "Slowly I turned..."
The modern e-mail version of this scam, known variously as the "Nigerian
scam", "Nigerian All-Stars" etc., is an
Advance fee fraud. The
lottery
scam is a contempory twist on this scam.
Avoiding e-mail fraud
E-mail fraud may be avoided by:
- keeping one's e-mail address as secret as possible
- ignoring unsolicited e-mails of all types, simply deleting them.
- not giving in to greed, since greed is the element that allows one to be
'hooked'.
- if you have been defrauded, report it to law enforcement authorities --
many frauds go unreported, due to shame, guilty feelings or embarrassment.
See also
External links
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