Once scammers or hackers get your email address, you are likely to find a deluge of spam and scam emails coming your way and it’s virtually impossible to get your name off those scam lists.
What Are Phishing Email Scams
This is where the scammer pretends to be someone you know or a company you buy from e.g. BT broadband or Amazon or maybe from a government department – anyone they think you might trust.
They try to get your email address as well as logins and passwords and financial information.
The easiest way to get your details is often by phishing emails.
They buy a list of email addresses from other scammers and send out emails– maybe pictures of kittens to click on or a promise of a $500 voucher or a threat of fines for overdue tax etc.
The most common are:
- Advertisement spams such as online shopping, pharmacy purchases
- Work-from-home job offers and schemes
- Threats from such as the tax office
- Free offers
- Lottery wins from lotteries you didn’t even enter
Other Ways That Spammers Use To Get Your Email Address
- By using harvesting programs
These programmes search websites, forums etc. and collect email addresses for the scammers.
If your email address is anywhere on the Internet, then it can be found and sold to other scammers.
- Creating sets of possible email addresses from a small number of genuine ones.
If your company has emails of the format firstname.surname @companu.com for example then scammer simply make up addresses using common names.
They cans end out messages to hundreds or thousands of such made up addresses and se which ones get replies.
If you have any experiences with these scams do let me know, by email.
