The Fraud
The list of Internet scams is enormous. New ones are added daily. Home business opportunities, make $2000 a day stuffing envelopes, lose 40 pounds this weekend and sell your friends this magic elixir, don't pass up this investment opportunity, act today, you've won the sweepstakes, . . . and the beat goes on.
Here are but a few of the most common examples:
- Advance Fee frauds abound. Probably the most familiar email scam is the Nigerian letter gambit, better known as a 419 Fraud (after the number of the Nigerian penal code section that deals with such schemes.) You usually receive a long and pathetic recitation of the sad circumstances of the sender who can get millions of dollars he'd be glad to share with you if only you could give him a U.S. bank account number to clear it through and pay a modest fee upfront. If the fee is sent to show good faith and the bank account number is provided, the account will be cleaned out and the proceeds, the fee and the perpetrator will disappear.
- Phishing (spoofing) is email that looks like it came from a well-known company, asking you to reply with personal information such as a credit card number, Social Security number or account password. They sometimes include a link to a website that looks exactly like the legitimate one for the real company. If the information is provided to the fraudster, identity theft enables all sorts of mischief. Banks are often spoofed, as are sites like eBay.
- Social engineering is a crime of manipulation. You are conned into revealing, for example, company secrets or proprietary information. The notorious Frank Abagnale of Catch Me If You Can fame was a master of social engineering.
- Chain letters are illegal for both email and snail mail. Many are harmless annoyances forwarded by friends who have nothing better to do, but others are pure scams. The most common are those that tell a woeful tale of a terminally ill blind orphan who needs money to go to Disney World in search of a cure. If you'd just send a measly $5 to this address . . . and forward this letter to 10 of your closest personal friends . . . a blessing will come to you before sunset.
The Flaw
These common scams and hundreds more work when gullible, good hearted souls respond to them. "My bank is watching out for me and they need my password to test something. How nice." "Oh that poor little child. I hope Mr. Disney can cure him."
The Fix
Using spam filters is a good start. Never give any kind of personal information to anyone, no matter how legitimate the request may appear. Skepticism is a virtue!