Over the next several weeks we will be doing a series of posts on the various types of fraud email that we see on a regular basis. Fraud email, as distinguished from regular spam, attempts to gain your confidence in order to persuade you to hand over information that can be used to gain access to your financial resources. There are a number of common strategies employed in these messages and we will be devoting a separate post to each one in the coming weeks.
Some of the different approaches include:
- Mysterious Benefactor
- Work From Home/Mule Fraud
- You Won the Lottery!
- Fool’s Gold
- Scam Victim Compensation
- GI Benefits Fraud
- Domain Name Disputes
- Stranded Abroad
- Scam The Lawyers
- Bibles For the Needy
- Conference Invitation
- Spoils of War
- Assassination Threat
- Email Account Phishing
- Adopt a Puppy
We will link the above as the posts are published and probably add more as the series progresses.
Although fraud email only accounts for around two percent of our normal filtering load these are some of the most insidious messages in the spam lexicon. The best ones are carefully crafted to prey upon various emotions such as greed, sympathy, fear, despair, guilt and religious devotion. Like any other con game they will use your best or worst qualities against you.
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