Phishing and Email Scams on the Internet

While the Internet has provided many benefits, it has also provided opportunities for people to run scams  and commit acts of  fraud. One type of scam  is phishing where a victim is duped into providing credit card information or a social security number. Phishing scams  operate by email. The victim relieves an email from someone pretending to be a bank. Another type of email scam tends to come from foreign countries such as the UK, Serbia or Cote D' Ivore which means Ivory Coast. Both types of scams  try to steal money from the victim by deception. Although these emails are not hard to identify, people apparently still fall for them since they proliferate more than ever. It is remarkable that even though these types of fraud have been around for years, the message itself has gone mostly unchanged. The scammers  haven't had to change or adapt to the response from authorities or the public. Even though more people are aware of phishing and other Internet email scams, there always seems to be a fresh supply of victims.

Phishing emails tend to be more bank or financial institution oriented. Frequently, a phishing attempt will identify itself as Citibank, Chase or Bank of America. Other possible names that might be encountered would be PayPal or the IRS. The PayPal scam  is one of the oldest and they are still frequent like http://www.limundo.com/. The victim usually relieves an email with the subject heading stating that there is a problem with their account. It might say "Urgent Message," "Attention Needed," "Account limited," or "Account deactivated." Upon opening the email, the recipient is told that to fix the problem, they have to login and enter their account number. Some of the other words that might be seen in the subject line include "Alert" and "Notice." If the victim opens the email, there might also be a link to a web site for them to log in. This is not the legitimate site for that company. It may look exactly the same because the scammer  has copied the source code for the website and created a fake website using that code. At first glance, it looks like the real website. The way to tell if it is legitimate or not is to look at the URL at the bottom of the browser when the mouse is placed over the link without clicking. If the website address does not have the name of the bank, company or government agency in the URL, then it is probably a phishing scam.

The IRS scam, which appears to be more recent, tends to focus on telling the victim that they are due an IRS refund check. People who fall for this scam end up giving away their social security number along with other information.

Besides phishing, the other type of email scam found on the Internet mostly comes from foreign countries. These can usually be identified right away due to capitalized headings in the email, high government or company official in the from field and bad spelling. Other clues might include bad grammar to the point of not even understanding the message and also a large amount of money that the victim is supposed to receive, usually $ 1 million or more. The country that seems to be the greatest source of these types of Internet scams is Nigeria. The victim may receive an email from a person claiming to be the head of the Central Bank of Nigeria or a family member of a deposed leader. Another variation is the Nigerian inheritance scam  where the victim is entitled to receive a vast fortune of millions of dollars from a dead or dying relative in Nigeria. Other countries, mostly in Africa or Europe, may be mentioned in the emails. In Africa, these include Benin, Cote D' Ivore also known as Ivory Coast and South Africa. The ones in Europe appear mostly to come from the UK. Most notable of these is the UK lottery scam  where the victim is told that in order to receive their winnings they must process some paper work that requires a fee. When the victim pays this fee, they never see the money they supposedly won.

The Nigerian scams are also known as 419 frauds. 419 is a section of the Nigerian legal code that deals with advance fee fraud. The victim has to pay a fee in order to receive the massive fortune.

Phishing scams and other forms of email fraud can be prevented by a little observation and thinking. A person receiving a phishing email or Nigerian letter doesn't have to be a victim.

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