My previous blog post discussed Spam emails. In this post I am going to talk about Scam emails and how they can be devastating to your financial future.

SCAM Emails are becoming a more and more sophisticated. They are the result of cyber criminals acquiring your email address, much in the same manner as the spammers did. They then send you email after email spamming you with the attempt to get you to click on a link that will take you to a website that they set up with the specific purpose of attempting to infect your computer with their Trojan spyware. Once your computer is infected with their payload then you are at their mercy, whether it be to attempt to steal your financial information or turn your computer into a member of their “bot-net” whereby they use your computer to send out more and more scam emails.

There are several methods that cyber criminals will use in order to get hold of your financial information. Most notably by using the name of online payment companies in emails that are designed to look just like those received from sites like PayPal, Paymentech, or even some bank you may have never heard of telling you that your account has been closed and that you must click a link and fill out a form to re-activate it. This is Fraud, pure and simple! If you do what they want you to do, then they will have your banking and/or credit card information and they can proceed to empty your bank account or charge up your credit card. In worse cases, your identity could be stolen and credit cards can be opened in your name that will never get paid and that you will become liable for.

How can you identify if this is a scam/fraud email? One way is to look at the To: field on your email. Often it will have an email address that you do not use with that bank or it may simply say “none” or “undisclosed-recipients”. This is good indication that it is a scam email even if they address you by your first name.

Now, if you don’t have an account with PayPal, Paymentech, BMO Bank of Montreal, Western Union, etc. then it is easy to simply ignore these or report them as Fraud and delete them. But if you DO have an account with PayPal, or you receive an email that you suspect as a fraud but it has the name of your bank on it, then you should immediately contact your bank or PayPal, etc. by phone and confirm with them the nature of the email. Most often it will turn out that the email is a scam and the institution will thank you for bringing it to their attention.

In my next post I will discuss Bogus emails.

Frank Verdusco
CPU Help