Email fraud From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedias quality standards. No cleanup reason has been specified. Please help improve this article if you can. (October 2007) Question book-new.svg This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2010) Email fraud is the intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual through email. Almost as soon as email became widely used, it began to be used as a means to defraud people. Email 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. Email fraud, as with other bunco schemes usually targets 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. Contents 1 Forms 1.1 Spoofing 1.1.1 Phishing for data 1.2 Bogus offers 1.3 Requests for help 2 Avoiding email fraud 3 References 4 See also 5 External links Forms Spoofing Main article: Email spoofing Email 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 senders name and the origin of the message are concealed or masked from the recipient. Many, if not most, instances of email fraud do use at least minimal spoofing, as most frauds are clearly criminal acts. Criminals typically try to avoid easy traceability. Phishing 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 victims 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 Email 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 a phishing attempt to obtain the victims 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 email fraud takes this form: an email is sent requesting help in some way. However, a reward is included for this help, which acts as a hook. The reward may be 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, known as the Spanish Prisoner or Turkish Prisoner scam. In its original form, this scheme has the con man purport to be 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 con man tells the mark (victim) that he is allowed to supply money, for which he should expect a generous reward when the prisoner returns. The confidence artist claims to have chosen the victim for their reputation for honesty. Other form of fraudulent help requests is represented by a romance scam. Under this form, fraudsters (pretended males or females) build online relationships, and after some time, they ask for money from the victims. They claim the money is needed due to the fact they have lost their money (or their luggage was stolen), they have been beaten or otherwise harmed and they need to get out of the country to fly to the victims country. 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 at least the title of the vaudevillian routine known by the same name, as Niagara Falls, or as Slowly I turned... The modern email version of this scam, known variously as the Nigerian scam, Nigerian All-Stars, etc., due to the fact that it is typically based in Nigeria, is an advance fee fraud. The lottery scam is a contemporary twist on this scam. Avoiding email fraud Due to the widespread use of web bugs in email, simply opening an email can potentially alert the sender that the address to which the email is sent is a valid address. This can also happen when the mail is reported as spam, in some cases: if the email is forwarded for inspection, and opened, the sender will be notified in the same way as if the addressee opened it. Email fraud may be avoided by: Keeping ones email address as secret as possible. Using a spam filter. Noticing the several spelling errors in the body of the official looking email. Ignoring unsolicited emails of all types and simply deleting them. Ignoring offers from unknown sources. The contents of an email are not a formal or binding agreement. Many frauds go unreported to authorities, due to feelings of shame, guilt, or embarrassment. References See also 419eater Mail fraud Advance fee fraud Lottery scam Confidence trick Fraud Get-rich-quick schemes Spamming Web bug External links Email Scam Reports no419 - Nigerias Business Private Investigator Learn about Email Scams, Identity Theft and Phishing Fight Against Scam Emails Categories: Spamming Confidence tricks Internet fraud Navigation menu Create account Log in Article Talk Read Edit View history Main page Contents Featured content Current events Random article Donate to Wikipedia Interaction Help About Wikipedia Community portal Recent changes Contact page Tools Print/export Languages Deutsch Español Esperanto Français 한국어 Italiano עברית Nederlands 日本語 Norsk bokmål Norsk nynorsk Polski Português Русский Suomi Svenska 中文 This page was last modified on 5 November 2013 at 19:45. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization. Privacy policy About Wikipedia Disclaimers Contact Wikipedia Developers Mobile view Wikimedia Foundation Powered by MediaWiki
Posted on: Thu, 07 Nov 2013 16:14:12 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015