Posts Tagged ‘scam’
Thursday, July 22nd, 2010
Here we go again. The vultures are circling, ready to take advantage of people affected by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill; just like they do after every disaster.
We just blocked a stack of emails purporting to offer help collecting money from the 20 billion dollar compensation fund BP is so graciously providing. In reality though, these emails are an advance-fee fraud attempt.
Advance-fee fraud is a con game in which the perpetrator promises to help the victim receive a large payment (such as an inheritance) but requires “up-front” money to complete the transaction. If the victim is gullible enough they may request several advance payments but in all cases the final payout is never delivered.
The examples we’re focusing on today are pretty slimy overall and not difficult to detect as fraud but they do provide some insights into how these advance-fee scams work.
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Tags: fraud, scam
Posted in Email Fraud, The Lighter Side | No Comments »
Friday, July 2nd, 2010
A new spam campaign is circulating that is spoofing “WordPress” blog subscriptions.
Emails most commonly arrive as:
Subject: [WordPress.com] Activate http://stephen.wordpress.com/
From: WordPress.com <donotreply@wordpress.com>
Below is a screen shot of an example email:
WordPress Phishing Fraud
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Tags: botnet, fraud, malware, scam, spoofing
Posted in Email Fraud, Spam Tactics | No Comments »
Wednesday, June 30th, 2010
We don’t even know where to begin with this one:
Subject: Central Intelligence Agency
From: Central Inteligency Agency
To: undisclosed recipients: ;
The Central Inteligency Agency. Really?
(more…)
Tags: 419 scams, fraud, funny, scam
Posted in Email Fraud, The Lighter Side | No Comments »
Monday, June 28th, 2010
Let’s get this straight right off the bat: There’s no such thing as a free . . . credit score.
You can get a free credit report once a year from each of the three major credit reporting agencies (Equifax, TransUnion and Experian) by visiting www.annualcreditreport.com. The annualcreditreport.com site allows the credit bureaus to meet their government mandated obligation to disclose credit records to debtors and provides the most information you are going to get for free. Even annualcreditreport.com links to sites managed by the credit bureaus and they each try to trick you into buying credit “management” services while you are getting your annual free report.
Again, this is a free credit report. They are under no obligation to disclose your credit scores. Scores are only provided by the credit bureaus and only for a fee so for someone to give you a free credit score they would have to pay the fee for you.
Not likely.
In spite of this, the email message we’re focusing on today says “Get Your Free Credit Scores From All 3 Bureaus Now!”. So we have to wonder how they afford to give away free credit scores?
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Tags: bait and switch, fraud, scam
Posted in Email Fraud | No Comments »
Thursday, June 17th, 2010
“The security of your account is important to us” says the subject of an email message sent to one of our customers by AT&T|Universal Card.
It came to our attention because it’s so fiendishly difficult to determine whether or not it’s a phishing attempt.
Subject: The security of your account is important to us
From: AT&T Universal Card <universalcard@info4.citibank.com>
Rather than bore you with the details of how we decided this message was legitimate we thought we’d apply some of the suggestions found on the Anti-Phishing Council’s Phishing Page and see if we should trust this email.
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Tags: fraud, humor, phishing, scam
Posted in Phishing Lessons | No Comments »
Wednesday, June 9th, 2010
What’s really cool about this particular fraud attempt is what it reveals about the scanning capabilities of the United States Postal Inspection Service. Apparently they have scanners that can look inside a package, determine that it’s an ATM card, tell you how much the card is worth and what its serial number is.
Amazing!
We feel so much safer knowing that they can see all of this without opening the package.
(more…)
Tags: fraud, scam
Posted in Email Fraud | No Comments »
Monday, June 7th, 2010
Okay, so the phrase “honest fraud” is a total oxymoron but there’s no other way to describe this campaign.
Most mule fraud messages try to pretend that there’s nothing illegal going on. Usually they say thing’s like “don’t worry, this isn’t illegal” and they try to pretend they’re in a legitimate business.
But not this one.
It starts right out with: “I want to be honest with you this is not legal” and goes on to explain how you can make money from home by forwarding counterfeit checks to the author’s contacts “everywhere in the USA”.
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Tags: fraud, scam
Posted in Email Fraud | No Comments »
Wednesday, May 12th, 2010
Since Craigslist is an important tool in the Internet criminal’s arsenal, it of course makes sense that hijacking legitimate user’s Craigslist.org accounts would be a priority to the cyber-crooks as well.
Emails we’re seeing to achieve such identity theft include this simple message:
Subject: Your craigslist account needs to be confirmed!
From: ”craigslist.org”<noreply@craigslist.org>
(more…)
Tags: fraud, phishing, scam
Posted in Email Fraud, Phishing Lessons | 2 Comments »
Monday, May 3rd, 2010
It’s not often that spammers impress us, but whomever is behind the latest NetSpend Phishing fraud has really rung the bell for quality in an email fraud.
A typical email arrives with:
Subject: Your NetSpend Account Changes (#39)
From: NetSpend <support@netspend.com>
The body of the message is short and simple, and goes the extra step of including your name (or email login) in the introductory line:
(more…)
Tags: fraud, phishing, scam
Posted in Email Fraud, Phishing Lessons | 2 Comments »
Thursday, April 29th, 2010
Another twist to the ongoing “mailbox quota” phishing campaigns arrives with headers like:
Subject: Attention from IT SERVICE!
From: ”Holland, Jack” <Jack.Holland@csn.edu>
To: ”information@access.org” <information@access.org>
Interestingly, while the sender address is likely spoofed, the examples we see do come from the same sending domain as claimed in the headers, in this case:
from webmail.csn.edu 131.216.92.205
(more…)
Tags: fraud, phishing, scam
Posted in Email Fraud, Phishing Lessons | No Comments »
Here we go again. The vultures are circling, ready to take advantage of people affected by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill; just like they do after every disaster.
