Scams

[Tony Payne]

I keep my mail email address for friends and family, a second for registering with main websites (like banks, anything financial), a 3rd for other online services (stores, ebay, amazon etc), and then a 4th for things like bulletin boards.  The 4th can be thrown away if necessary and replaced by a new one, the 3rd if necessary.  Only family, friends and reliable  web sites should have the main addresses, so with luck they shouldn't get too much junk mail.

[Tony Payne]

ANOTHER BIG NO-NO

I just remembered this very important thing also....

If you ever receive any of those emails that promise you free this and free that if you forward the email to your friends, they are just scams.  Microsoft, Coke or whoever do not have a way of tracking how many people you forwarded the email too, it's just a way for the scammers to clog up the internet with junk mail, and also most importantly a way to harvest email addresses.

For example, if someone sends you one of these emails, they probably sent it to 50 people with all 50 addresses in the To list.  That means you now have access to the email addresses for all 50 of those people - if you are a scammer that will make you happy.

However - if you forward that email intact to 50 of your friends and use the same technique (use the To address for all 50 names), then each of your friends will know not only about the other 50, but they will also have the 50 names that were sent to you.

I have seen emails forwarded ad infinitum and containing as many as 1,000 addresses.  It only takes 1 scammer to guarantee your email address is added to a junk mailing list somewhere.

Also, it only takes 1 of the computers that has received a copy of that email to get infected by a virus, and it could be even worse.

I have 2 pieces of advice....
1.  Unless you absolutely feel you have to pass it on, chop out the bits with other people's email addresses first.
2. Send to your friends using the BCC (Blind Copy) addressing option.  Blind Copy sends the message so that each recipient only sees their own address and yours.

[Lydart]

We are a household here that has a priest and a lay reader living in it, and its surprising how many of these 'Nigerian' ones we get ... (and I'm not knocking Nigeria ... they come from other places too) ... which are church orientated.  How do they know that we might be tempted to open them ?  We don't, but I'd love to know how we get targeted by this sort of specific scam email.  Do families of, say doctors, get medical type begging emails, e.g. support our hospital; send money to this man dying with aids ? 

My advice is to have a GOOD email sifter, so that all spam gets put into one mail-box, and you can check it every few days, just to see if something you wanted has got into the wrong box. 

And yes, I agree, DON'T send on all those rude jokes that your friends send to you, WITHOUT deleting all the long list of peoples emails !  I got one recently which had nearly 500 email addresses on it ! 

Lydart

[Burrow Digger]

We are a household here that has a priest and a lay reader living in it, and its surprising how many of these 'Nigerian' ones we get ... (and I'm not knocking Nigeria ... they come from other places too) ... which are church orientated.  How do they know that we might be tempted to open them ?  We don't, but I'd love to know how we get targeted by this sort of specific scam email.  Do families of, say doctors, get medical type begging emails, e.g. support our hospital; send money to this man dying with aids ? 

My advice is to have a GOOD email sifter, so that all spam gets put into one mail-box, and you can check it every few days, just to see if something you wanted has got into the wrong box. 

And yes, I agree, DON'T send on all those rude jokes that your friends send to you, WITHOUT deleting all the long list of peoples emails !  I got one recently which had nearly 500 email addresses on it ! 

Lydart

No they are not targeted.  The Scammers do use a lot of church related scams simply because they are playing on your concious, your pity, your sympathy (oh those poor people, I must help them).

I do not go to any church, I do not have an ebay account, and I do not do a lot of online purchasing. But I still get emails supposedly from banks, ebay, paypal and other businesses.

I have seen so many now, that I can usually recognize the headings and delete them without even opening them.

As for the woman in the story who was scammed because she put her family tree online, thats a warning to never put personal details online.

In my family tree, (see my siggy) nothing is more recent than my grandparents, and even then I have listed ONLY their names. NO dates and NO places. If anyone wants to find out more info, they can email me and ask.


BD

[Nick Carver]

I am plagued with e-mails from a company 'looking' for a part-time finance manager. Duties nominal, remuneration just enough to get interesting. I haven't followed it up as I am sure that I will be asked to pay admin fees before I can take up the post and as others have said, replying to spam confirms an address as genuine. In retrospect, I think I made the right decision as I get ten or more such mails each day, This may well be because I get all mail to unrecognised addresses in my domain in my inbox.

The other pain at the moment concerns so called hot tips in the stockmarket. The scam is very simple. You buy stock in a random company, send out millions of mails purporting to come from an analyst tipping that stock for great things, the stock climbs when mugs buy it and the perpetrator sells at a profit. Arguably not illegal, but certainly immoral and one to avoid like the plague. As I get so much junk mail, I see hundreds of these things. Interestingly, the original version of this scam came when somebody 'accidentally' left a memo in a city restaurant tipping a stock to take off. It was picked up by a broker who told all his mates and the stock did take off because they were all buying it. Much more subtle and almost to be applauded for ingenuity as the stock did indeed behave in the way the memo predicted.

I too am a churchgoer and get many mails playing to that. I do not think I am targeted as I do not participate in any religious web-based activities. I just think I notice these things because I would normally be sympathetic to the pleas made in such mails.

[suttontrust]

One way of screening emails, before they ever get to your inbox, is to view them via a site like mail2web.  It's especially useful if you have access to the internet at work.  You can open those you're not sure about with no fear of nasties getting on to your system, and delete all the junk.

[Jean McGurn]

I just had one supposedly coming from a woman in the Nederlands. Funny thing is her e-mail address is .pl which I believe is Poland.

I just binned it as usual

Jean

[Tony Payne]

.pl is Poland yes.

If you know how you can also look at the full email headers.  That will tell you the IP address / Server / Email address the message originated from - well usually some of those if not all.  Parts can be faked, but if you sense something is not right then it probably isn't.