Spam, spam, beans and spam

[Motherwoman]

Why are spam emails sent? Is anyone ever daft enough to believe them. This morning I had several offers of Russian brides (I've told himself that it's an overweight fella in a string vest sending them and he was soooo disappointed), apparently several people in Africa want me to clear funds for many millions of dollars (which is probably why they keep addressing me as 'my dear') and I have to urgently respond to an email from Claude... who?

We'll all be in big trouble if they actually get written by someone with a command of the English language instead of a google translator. I was hailed with 'greetings of the day' from one, have they been reading a menu do you think?

But some people must respond or they wouldn't keep sending them, would they?

MW

[oldherbaceous]

Dear MW, sadly people do reply, and some of them are highly intelligent too...maybe greed, desperation and even loneliness has somthing to do with it.

I think if i replied, i would be asking them for money first...

[peter]

Person A sends out 1000 emails 1 person responds and falls for the scam with £200 going to A.

Next day A does it again.

A pays pennies per email address or more if they are of previously gullible people.

That's small scale, person B controls dozens of A'sand feeds them contact's B takes between 50% and 90% of their gains.

It only needs one in a thousand or ten thousand to fall for it for money to be made as emails are virtually free to send.

[oldherbaceous]

You seem to know an awfull lot about how it works, Peter.

[peter]

Should do, I work in IT, part of my remit is security.

[Motherwoman]

I never open them or, heaven forbid, download anything, just read the first line. I always check that nothing has gone in spam by mistake, I had a spate of my holiday cottage bookings going into spam until I got the web-man to do something about it. Then I always delete them (not the bookings ). My youngest son says deleting sends a marker back that they've reached a genuine email address, is this true?

This morning I 'hovered' over the email addresses and the same person appears to be selling e-cigs, buying timeshare apartments,offering loans and selling medications at knock-down prices!

MW

[peter]

Deleting does not send anything anywhere and is the safest way to deal with the stuff.

Email systems can he set to request a delivery receipt and/or read receipt so reading or marking as read, are not a good idea. Following any embedded links or opening any attached documents are how the "payload" of malware gets delivered.

We're doing a cybersafe campaign at work right now with all these simple bits of advice yet still people fall for;

Email from IT SUPPORT to reset your password at this link.
Urgent payment for you.
Parcel held for you.
Overpaid tax refund.

The funny thing to me is that despite the precise details sbout the amounts of money or what's gone wrong, no one seems to notice the sender doesn't know their name!

Unless there are alot of people out there called Dear Customer.

[Motherwoman]

Thanks Peter, I shall now dazzle youngest son with superior knowledge!

The same email address from this morning now has a tarot card reader and I've won a lottery in some country where I've never been let alone bought a ticket...

MW

[PLUMPUDDING]

I got caught out last year. I'd had an e-mail from a friend about someone who was in our class at school dying and the following day I received another from them with an attachment but no message. I thought it was strange but opened the attachment and it completely messed up my computer and wasn't from my friend at all.

[Redfox]

I had an email the other week in my inbox,not spam folder, it was from a friend from church who is currently living in Tiawan or somewhere in that area. When I opened it, it was asking if I could help her by sending some money by transfer into her account as she was stuck in Brussles after having her bag stolen with her passport and purse in.
I found this very strange. I checked the address of the sender and it was the address that I had that belonged to her.
I decided that I would leave it for 24hours and see if she got in contact again but she didn't.
I think what has happened is her email account had been hacked.
So 'they' are trying alsorts of scams and you really have to be careful.

[peter]

That is a very common one.

Social engineering, trying to get people to follow a desired course of action willingly, although it will be to their detriment.

[Motherwoman]

Hi Redfox,

I had a couple of those 'I've had my wallet/bag stolen and need you to wire me some money' ones. Because it's someone you know, in my case from a work group of emails, it makes you stop and think but as I was supposed to be in a meeting with them in a couple of hours I thought better of it!

Clever way of spreading a virus I suppose.

MW

[peter]

Oh no, much more basic.

They want and get the £200 that you send to your friend. Who of course isn't your friend.

[Ricard with an H]

Most of our spam arrives at my partners inbox and her address is clearly sourced from banking sources. She also works in IT, and though she isn't involved in security she seems to be regularly updated on issues.

So, she has a healthy bank account and I'm at state-pension. Interesting that I get only those spam mails where my pals have opening a link and the spammer has harvested all the addresses.

I worry about my partners account, for all her accounting and business use she uses one private domain, this is the one that gets the really dodgy spam. Because we have private domains we keep throwaway accounts that do attract spam but the really r and worrying spam arrives in the account that is only attached to banking and professional matters.

I once once closed a Facebook account that I used purely to keep in touch with my grandchildren. Because I didn't like the language or the selfies I closed the account. Then the spam went massive
So Facebook sold my e-mail ? Similar happens when I ordered batteries online, same company seems to sell my e-mail address again and again.