Email fraud

relies on naive individuals who put their confidence in get-rich-quick schemes such as too good to be true investments or offers to sell popular items at impossibly low prices. Many people have lost their life savings due to fraud.

= Forms of email fraud =

== Spoofing ==

Email sent from someone pretending to be someone else is known as spoofing. Spoofing may take place in a number of ways. Common to all of them is that the actual sender s name and the origin of the message are concealed or masked from the recipient. Many, if not most, instances of email fraud use at least minimal spoofing, as most frauds are clearly criminal acts. Criminals typically try to avoid easy traceability.

=== Fishing for data ===

Some spoof messages purport to be from an existing company, perhaps one with which the intended victim already has a business relationship. The bait in this instance may appear to be a message from the fraud department of, for example, the victim s bank, which asks the customer to: confirm their information ; log in to their account ; create a new password , or similar requests. If the fish takes the bait , they are hooked -- their account information is now in the hands of the con man, to do with as they wish. See Phishing.

== Bogus offers ==

Email solicitations to purchase goods or services may be instances of attempted fraud. The fraudulent offer typically features a popular item or service, at a drastically reduced price.

Items may be offered in advance of their actual availability, for instance, the latest video game may be offered prior to its release, but at a similar price to a normal sale. In this case, the greed factor is the desire to get something that nobody else has, and before everyone else can get it, rather than a reduction in price. Of course, the item is never delivered, as it was not a legitimate offer in the first place.

Such an offer may even be no more than an attempt to obtain the victim s credit card information, with the intent of using the information to fraudulently obtain goods or services, paid for by the hapless victim, who may not know they were scammed until their credit card has been used up .

== Requests for help ==

The request for help type of email fraud takes this form. An email is sent requesting help in some way, but including a hook such as a large amount of money, a treasure, or some artifact of supposedly great value.

This type of scam has existed at least since the Renaissance, as the Spanish Prisoner. This scheme, in its original form,has the con man in correspondence with a wealthy person who has been imprisoned under a false identity, and is relying on the confidence artist to raise money to secure his release. The victim is allowed to supply money, expecting a generous reward when the prisoner returns. The confidence artist claims to have chosen the mark, (victim) for their reputation for honesty.

This confidence trick is similar to the face-to-face con, known as the Stranger with a kind face which is the likely origin of the Vaudeville routine known as The Stranger With a Kind Face, a.k.a. Niagara Falls , a.k.a. Slowly I turned...

The modern email version of this scam, known variously as the Nigerian scam , Nigerian All-Stars etc., is an Advance fee fraud. The lottery scam is a contempory twist on this scam.

= Avoiding email fraud =

Email fraud may be avoided by: *keeping one s email address as secret as possible *ignoring unsolicited emails of all types, simply deleting them. *not giving in to greed, since greed is the element that allows one to be hooked . *if you have been defrauded, report it to law enforcement authorities -- many frauds go unreported, due to shame, guilty feelings or embarrassment.

=See also=

*Fraud *Spamming *Confidence trick

= External links =

[http://www.millersmiles.co.uk Email Scam Reports]