This story is near and dear to me.  One day I went into a frenzy, because a good friend sent me an email that she was stranded in Ghana and needed me to send her some money.  She never mentioned she was going to Ghana.  I was taken off guard at first, because I had a couple of other friends who had gone to Ghana to work, about the same time. Common sense came to my rescue again. I finally collected my thoughts and called my friend’s boyfriend. He confirmed my friend’s Gmail account was hijacked and she was safe at home in New Jersey.  It only goes to show email administrators must constantly remind our email users not to open email from unknown people.

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Security experts are predicting that the next wave of phishing spam will attempt to exploit the recent financial woes on Wall Street. They say scammers are likely to start soon, using people’s fears of bank failures like that of Washington Mutual by sending official looking spam messages asking for their banking info in order for them to be assured of FDIC protection.

          E-mail scammers like to use global crises and high profile news headlines when baiting consumers,” said Peter Horan, chief executive officer of Goldman, in a press release issued this week to warn consumers of such attacks. “Phishers know how to make use of people’s vulnerabilities during times of stress.”

According to a recent survey, $3.2 billion was lost to phishing scams in 2007, and that figure is expected to keep rising. Banks spend between $100,000 and $500,000 a year to protect their customers from such scams.

The New York Times is reporting that the current economic crisis has led to a spoof of the classic 419 (aka Nigeria) spam scam. Everyone who has an email address has received at least one 419 spam. Named after the number given to the section of the Nigerian criminal code dealing with fraud, these emails claim to come from a desperate foreign national or lawyer who needs your bank account info-and promises millions in return. People who fall for it find their bank accounts emptied. The spoof reads in part:

           Dear American:

I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.

I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.

I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transactin is 100% safe.

This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.

It then goes on to request the recipient’s bank and IRA account numbers as well as those of their children and grandchildren. The sender is listed as Henry Paulson and the email address is “wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov. Most people will realize that it’s meant to be a spoof but you just know there’ll be at least one person who thinks it’s serious! Thankfully the email is fake so any personal info sent would just bounce back.

I laughed so hard when I read this story. This certainly adds a new twist to the Nigerian spam email we have all received over the years.  Network World previously reported a disturbing “hit man” scam email being distributed as spam. This is an update to that story, where a so called “hitman” threatens” to kill the reader, unless money is sent immediately.  I pray people are not that gullible to buy into this utter nonsense.  Unfortunatley some will. Read the rest of this entry »

An estimated 15% of all spam sent is of the “pump and dump” variety. These spams hype penny stocks in an attempt to temporarily raise their value so the spammers, who typically own the stocks themselves, can sell them for a profit. A return of up to 6% can be had.

          “This is basic lying, cheating and stealing and the message to anyone engaging in these shenanigans is they are going to get caught. Investors need to be extra careful when they are investing in this kind of company because they can lose all of their money and these stocks are particularly vulnerable to manipulation more than ever because of the internet,” said John Stark, head of internet enforcement at the SEC.

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Posted in Fighting spam, Spam news, anti spam 1 Comment Tags: scams, spammers