Category: Scam email

October 19, 2022

Most Common Phishing Scams

Phishing scams are where the scammer tries to get your confidential information by subterfuge of some kind.

e.g. you get an email saying you have won the lottery and just need to fill in your details to claim the money or you have an overdue tax payment to make immediately and you have to login to make the payment (on a fake website) or …..

The most common categories of phishing in 2021 were :

Spear Phishing

This is where phishing is targeted at specific individuals or companies.

Perhaps an email arrives, claiming to be from a trustworthy source and the sender knows your full name, job title and department for example. The scammer has done their homework to get this information about you to give the scam a higher chance of success.

A link in the message takes you to a bogus website made to look like the expected website. The fake website looks legitimate but only exists to take the users confidential information and pass it to the scammer.

Whaling

This is where scammers target a “big fish” like a business executive or celebrity. These scammers often conduct considerable research into their targets to find an opportune moment to steal login credentials or other sensitive information. If you have a lot to lose, whaling attackers have a lot to gain.

Vishing

One scam on the rise is ‘vishing‘, or voice phishing. Con artists phone people and pretend to be bank staff or the Police or some other authority figure and have a story that lets them try to get the subject’s personal details, credit card details, bank account password etc. depending on the specific scam.

For the bank account scam, they typically warn of fraudulent activity on your account. They then persuade you to move your account to a safe place (which happens to be an account owned by the scammer) and they convince you to give them the details necessary for the transfer or convince you to move the money yourself.

Stay safe.

If you have any experiences with these scams do let me know, by email.

October 17, 2022

The OneDrive Scam

Microsoft OneDrive is file storage in the Microsoft cloud i.e. on the Internet.

It is included when you buy various Microsoft products and is available free on a smaller scale on any Microsoft Windows PC.

Scammers know that a huge number of people use OneDrive so they target them with emails that look like they may be from Microsoft warning you about new files on your OneDrive or files about to expire or files waiting to be authorised etc.

One latest such scam email is from no-reply @onedrive.com which is a genuine Microsoft domain name but the scammer faked that address.

The message tells you that 2 files have been sent to you via OneDrive – an invoice and a remittance advice and that they will both expire the following day.

It is perfectly possible to send files to someone using OneDrive and email, but you would add a message to explain why you are sending something – wouldn’t you?

So when a message states that OneDrive files are attached and there is no explanation, doesn’t say who they are from and the file names are meaningless then it’s just a scam.

Do not click any links. Just delete the message

If you have any experiences with these scams do let me know, by email.

October 16, 2022

Stupidest Scam of the Week LinkedIn Magic

A detailed email supposedly from Prabhip tells us all about how we can sell even more real estate at higher profit margins using his techniques.

This is from an email to the radio station and selling real estate is not our business.

But he seems convinced we sell real estate on LinkedIn and also coach people on how to do it and that we make a lot of money doing so, but of course he can help us to make even more money.

He claims to have seen our sales pitch on LinkedIn and read all about our coaching business.

This is just weird.

We’re a local radio station so all of this is just from some scammer’s imagination.

The email is to an Abigail at the station, but there is no such person.

Is it really just random rubbish or has someone slod this moron information that they had simply made up?

Who knows.

If you have any experiences with these scams do let me know, by email.

October 15, 2022

Time-Wasters Update

Amayah Vinson wants to sell to me the details for the 18,000 people who signed up to attend the UK Games Expo. This is obviously fake as those people didn’t sign up for their email addresses etc. to be sold to random people.

Mr Chen Chung works in Hong Kong and has $18,991,691 that he needs to move from a bank there to any other country and is willing to cut me in if I help him. His email address is testtest@… and that’s not a good sign and he wants me to reply to a different personal email address – also a bad sign. Plus he doesn’t know my name. Could anyone believe that a person who doesn’t even know your name wants to trust you with their millions of dollars? There is no money and no-one named Chen Chung, just a 419 scam to catch greedy stupid people.

There are numerous businesses that buy and sell lists of email addresses, physical addresses etc. and some go out of business. One trick used by scammers is pretending to be such a business shutting down and hence ‘giving away’ its lists at usually 90% or 95% or 99% discount. These are lies of course – they are after your financial information so they can add you to their spammers list for sale and to identity thieves. If you get one of these massive discount offers – don’t think yourself to be lucky – more the opposite as the scammers are targeting you.

An email arrives from 787266602911-erp092932120-poqwa232233222 @… Is anyone going to believe that is not from a scammer? It claims there have been abnormal activities on my email account so they have blocked it and I have to click the link to release the block. Pathetic drivel from a pathetic scammer.

A message tells me that the version of NHS jobs I have been using will close shortly and I need to register on the new website for NHS jobs. No – never heard of NHS jobs website and certainly not looking to work in the NHS. No thanks even if it was true, which it isn’t.

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October 8, 2022

Time-Wasters Update

Pancake Swap sounds like something for kids and the logo looks like it’s designed for 3 year olds, however it is in fact a strange cyber currency market website to do with cyber currency swapping. Emails from Pancake Swap tell you that your cybercurrency wallet has yet to be verified and will shortly be suspended. Maybe they bought a spam list and send out these messages to get people interested and accessing their website. Maybe there is some other odd benefit to the emails, but whatever it is I’m not interested and don’t like lies, even on email. I don’t have such an account therefore it cannot be suspended.

An email message claims that a radio station email address has just received a file via WeTransfer. We have used the WeTransfer service at times to send files larger than email systems can cope with, but the email address the scammer chose is a dead one, out of use for a long time and the claim that someone has sent a proforma invoice is laughable. We wont be opening that.

Supermarkets sometimes send out surveys to their customers and occasionally reward those fill them in by sending a small value voucher. However the email offer, supposedly from Morrisons of a £100 voucher for spending 5 minutes on a survey is ludicrous and Morrisons do not send such emails out to random people. The sender’s email address is @travelspell.lol which is obviously not Morrisons.

A scam email claims that a specific vinegar will reduce your chance of heart attack by 43%. Nope – just a scammer as there is no such research proving that vinegar of any kind reduces the risk of heart attack.

Veronica’s email says she is very happy for us as we are one of 3 people who have won a new Range River worth £99,370. We just have to answer a few questions and confirm our details to collect the prize. However, the email address the scammer sent the message to is a fake one invented by a scammer, so it’s all fake.

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October 4, 2022

The SharePoint Phishing Scam

Security researchers at Microsoft are warning all users of SharePoint about phishing scams imitating SharePoint.

SharePoint is a Microsoft collaboration tool for businesses and it is very popular so there are millions of users for these scammers to target.

The scammers try to steal logins and passwords from business users. It might seem a strange way to get money but the scammers will use those credentials to access company data in the hope of finding sensitive information, bank accounts, payment cards etc.

Even just email accounts and passwords they find can be sold to other scammers on the dark web.

Some scammers focus on getting access to sensitive information then trying to blackmail the company – pay or your files will be encrypted or deleted.

These scam messages are generally profession looking and have the correct logos etc. Without inspection, they look real and users not familiar with fake SharePoint messages can sometimes be fooled.

The message contains a link that looks like a normal SharePoint link but if you check then you will see it doesn’t go to a SharePoint address but to a standard website address nothing to do with your business.

If you click the link you will be asked for your login and password. This is not SharePoint behaves so don’t give your details.

The messages subject line can be anything from Holiday booking to late meeting to price book to invoice due.

If you receive a SharePoint message and are unsure then check the ender’s email address. If its not the person you expected then delete the message.

If you have any experiences with these scams do let me know, by email.