E-mail Scammers: They’re Phishing For You. Don’t Bite!

E-mail scams are a dime a dozen. For the past several years, a number of individuals have been running a scam out of Nigeria in which consumers are told that their help is required to have money transferred to the US. In return, people are promised that a huge amount of money will be given to them. There is only one catch. You need to furnish your Social Security Number, bank account number, and bank transfer information.

Many people have fallen for this scam, only to find that their bank accounts have been cleaned out. The poor employment picture over the past three years has made many people desperate and significantly more suseptable to this type of fraud.

These Nigerian e-mail scams are fairly easy to identify. The e-mail messages that are sent clearly state that the message originated in Nigeria. The body of the message is generally littered with bad grammer and misspellings.

Phishing scams however are a lot more sophisticated and have been know to fool even the most experienced Internet users.

Simply put, phishing is the use of spoofed e-mail addresses and internet addresses. For instance, you could receive an e-mail message that looks like it comes from info@eBay.com, even though eBay didn’t send the message. There may be links within the message that look like they belong to eBay, even though they don’t.

The fact that phishing e-mail messages look so real poses a considerable danger to consumers.

Typically the way a phishing message works is that consumers are told that their account information is out of date, or that their credit card has expired, and they need to make an update to their account. When the consumer clicks on the link contained in the message, they are taken to a page that looks like a known web site such as eBay, PayPal, America Online, etc… The site is actually a fake.

The consumer is then asked to make updates which may include furnishing credit card numbers or even Social Security Numbers. By the time consumers finish updating their information, they have no clue that they have just become victims of fraud.

In one such case in Texas, the suspect was found guilty and sentenced to four years in federal prison. The reality of this type of crime however is that it is very difficult to catch those committing the crime. It can also ruin your credit record.

There are a few things that you can do to protect yourself from phishing.

First, if you receive a message that requests you to update personal information for any account you have with a web site, look at the salutation of the message. If it reads something like “Dear Customer”, it is probably a scam. eBay, AOL, and Yahoo! all know your real name, if you have registered with them, and they will use it in their letter to you.

Secondly, even if your name is used in the letter, you should never click on a link within a letter that requests you to update information. Type the primary address into your browser address bar. For example, if the link in the letter takes you to the address http://www.fakesite.com/update.htm, you would only type in http://www.fakesite.com. Once at the site, use your regular sign in procedure and then check your account information from there. This will insure that the site you are on is actually the site you want to be on.

Third, send copies of suspicious e-mail messages to the customer service address of the company supposedly issuing the message. They will be happy to tell you if the message is really from them. If it isn’t, then file a report with the Federal Trade Commission.

And finally, use common sense. If an offer looks to good to be true, it probably is. If your account on eBay worked this morning, it probably still does this afternoon. Never automatically assume that just because an e-mail message looks legitimate at first glance, that it really is. Take the time to look closely at any requests for highly personal information.