US watchdog: Scam scammers scamming scammed in scam scam America's trade regulator the FTC has issued a warning over reports of a new data-harvesting operation that is targeting the victims of a previous scam. The federal watchdog says someone is emailing people, claiming to be from the FTC and soliciting claim forms from the $586m Western Union settlement payout. In this case, the …
Wrong. The thing to know is that you should never, ever trust anything coming into your Inbox without checking first.
Your bank sends you a mail and a link to some great opportunity ? Phone your banker and ask why in hell is he sending you spam. If the bank really did send you that mail, he'll be able to justify it.
You get a note telling you that your PayPal account has been suspended and use this link to get it reinstated ? Log onto your account yourself and check it out - you already have the link, don't you ?
I'm beginning to think that our society is not going to die because zombies, or aliens, or anything awesome like that. No, it'll die of convenience.
The thing they fail to note, is these scams exist in phone, letter, fax and pager versions too.
For those who wish to know the best way to apply for a refund, please send me all your private details via recorded carrier pigeon.
Probably the next step will be for the letters and so on to cite US and state laws that (when viewed a certain way) require banks and the like to offer refunds for instances of fraud (sort of like chargeback requests for fraudulent credit card transactions). Adding the stain of legality may make more people take the bait in spite of countermoves by the firms because the customers will think the companies are trying to scam them and that if all else fails they can consult a lawyer.
I know an old aged pensioner who was having a problem with their Internet banking. They then coincidentally received an email from their 'bank' asking them to log in and provided a link. Given the problem they were experiencing this email seemed legit. So filled everything in on the website they had been sent to and then had second thoughts. In a panic phoned the bank who were very sympathetic and took her login details account number and sort code to check. She was very relieved when they said those weren't her details and there was little chance of anyone being able to break in using them. She said there are some benefits to becoming a senile old fool.
I make sure this can never happen to me because I have an ongoing paid subscription to a security suite where a Microsoft Support Specialist checks my PC remotely through LogMeIn for any viruses or phishing emails.
This service also protects me against identity theft by accepting my monthly subscription payments with iTunes and STEAM cards that I purchase with cash at my local Wal Mart.
You can never be too careful!
The typical scam email I receive with obligatory mention of Nigeria, misspellings, poor grammar and unbelievable scenario and payoff seems designed to weed out all but the stupidest people. It really must be pretty efficient: if someone actually replies, you know you've got a live one.
The list of respondents would be enormously valuable because these people are the ones who didn't learn from their first experience so the likelihood of being able to extract money from them is very high. Some people just never learn.
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