Felix works as Chief Compliance officer at a Canadian Cryptoexchange and has found millions of dollars in an account belonging to a deceased person. With my help we can split the proceeds. This is a standard 419 scam where the scammer offers a fortune and I just have to provide personal details and join in a plan. There is of course no such fortune, the sender claims to be in Canada but uses a Japanese email address and does not know my name. It is unbelievable that people fall for such obvious scams, but some do. 

“Your remittance advice is ready RVIMTKN1934011265” is the heading for a new email message – either the attachment is an inducement to provide my confidential details such as login and password or the attached ‘remittance’ is laden with malware. I don’t need to find out which it is – just delete the message.  

A fairly common phishing message is along the lines of “Your Mailbox is Blocked” or “Mailbox Full” or “Mailbox Limit Exceeded”. This one is “Re: Mailbox Stopped” and is a typical phishing message. Some kind of problem is described then a button to click to verify my ownership of the mailbox (i.e. provide them with my login and password). This email shows my email address as the sender’s name which makes it obviously from a stupid scammer.

“Dwayne the Rock Johnson’s simple trick to build muscle fast” is an attention grabbing headline but is just lies, using a celebrity’s name illegally. It is difficult for celebrities to stop this kind of thing as the scammers move on before they can be prosecuted and the “email from” address they use is invariably registered in the name of an innocent person whose identity has been stolen.

As a website owner, I get lots of scammers emailing in to offer all sorts of rubbish they think may interest me. One latest one is from Mona Francisco who wants to publish her blog posts on my site. Apparently I can select the topics she will write and I will be paid by PayPal for the privilege.  Most of these kinds of messages are simple scammers trying to get access to a website to post their malware, adverts etc.  In this case it’s just a Marketing company with no morals trying to get names of website owners who would accept dubious content – then they can sell that information to other businesses.

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