Private message violation

[Julie Tyrell]

Has anyone else received one of these today???


Dear one
I am writting this letter with due respect and
heartful of tears since we have not known or met
ourselves previously.

I am asking for your assistance
after I have gone through a profile that speaks good
of you. I will be so glad if you can allow and lead me
to the right channel towards your assistance to my
situation now.

I will make my proposal well known if I
am given the opportunity. I would like to use this
opportunity to introduce myself to you. well, i am
fatima usman 20years old young lady and I know that this proposal might be a surprise to you but do consider it
as an emmergency.

In nutshell, My (late) father Mr sule usman
was a very wealthy gold and cocoa merchant who based
in Accra and Abidjan respectively. But he
was killed along side with my mother during last year's
Rable attact and all his properties was totally
destroyed.

However, after their death I managed to
escape with a very important document (DEPOSIT
CERTIFICATE (US$4.7m) four million Seven hundred
thousand U.S Dollars deposited by my late father in the bank
which i am the next of kin.

Meanwhile,i am saddled with the problem of
securing a trust worthy foriegn personality to help me
transfer the money over to his country and into his
possession pending my arrival to meet with him.

Furthermore,you can contact the bank for
confirmation and i will issue a letter of authorisation
on your name,that will enable the bank to
deal with you on my behalf.

I am giving you this offers
as mentioned with every confidence on your acceptance
to assist me or take me as your child and manage the
money. I am inclined to offer you 15% of the total sum
as a mode of compensation for your effort after the
successful transfering of these fund to your
nominated account overseas

Conclusively,i wish you send me a reply
immediately as soon as you recieve this
proposal,please write me back with this email
address Until then,i remain with the best regards fatima.

[Ladkyis]

It seems that someone thinks it is a funny idea to spam forums now! I am surprised they are bothered to waste their time. Do they have to be registered to send PMs?

Ann

[Peter Goodey]

It sounds a dashed good offer!!!

I think I'll take them up on it :D :D :D

[MarkJ]

Classic 419 scam - but I have never seen one sent as a PM before!
As far as I am aware, you need to be registered to send a PM, so the scam must have been sent via a registered name? If so, I would report it to the administrators of the forum via the little report link.

[susan-w]

You must have come across as very sympathetic in your forum postings :)

I'm a bit disappointed I wasn't considered for this kind offer now (- not!)

Sue

[GeoffD]

I got one of them, too. This is really a new slant on spamming. Labour intensive.

[Bengie]

I hasd the Nigerian scam in a email some time ago and sent it to the local
paper who done an article on it to warn others.

Let me tell you of a scam that I just couldn't resist answering.

It is the Canadian Lottery, of which we get a lot of in the UK.

I had won big money on this lottery even though I hadn't entered it.
They wanted around £1000 for admin charges (how stupid).
I emailed them back thanking them for notifying me of my win and told
them to take the admin charges out of the winnings and added
that they could also have 15% for themselves as a thank you and to send me what was left over.
Of course they never got back to me.

I wonder how many people actually fall for these things and how much they
make.

[MarkJ]

Can I make a little warning here for people?
Many of these scams - particularly the 419 scams - seem too silly for words. It is very tempting to email them and play along for a bit or whatever.
Be aware that many of these scammers are working for organised gangs - especially some of the 419ers - and many have associates in the UK, USA, Canada and other places.
Unless you really know what you are doing, it is not worth responding at all to these scams.
And never, ever, give them any personal details of any sort - certainly never agree to meet them.
If you really are keen to find out a little more on the scams - how they work etc - look at the websites for 419Eater or Scamorama. Both those sites have a lot of information about various scams.
Although the scams may seem stupid to most people, you would be amazed how many millions of US dollars and other currencies are scammed by these people each year. Even in the UK, there is a dedicated unit at Scotland Yard dealing with these crooks.

(Sorry to go on - they are one of my areas of interest )

Mark

[BeeE586]

I delete several similar offerings from my spam trap every week - unopened of course. Recently I have added NATIONWIDE, BARCLAY'S and HALIFAX to the customized spam list as I get reguar requests to "Update my details." Since I have never dealt with Halifax and severed any connection with Barclay's and Nationwide many years ago I can only assume this is another attempt to obtain personal information.

Eileen

[Mary Young]

Dear Rod
Should we be seeing the original posting of this Spam letter? The email return address still looks like an active link.

[MarkJ]

I delete several similar offerings from my spam trap every week - unopened of course. Recently I have added NATIONWIDE, BARCLAY'S and HALIFAX to the customized spam list as I get reguar requests to "Update my details." Since I have never dealt with Halifax and severed any connection with Barclay's and Nationwide many years ago I can only assume this is another attempt to obtain personal information.

Eileen

Yes, it is a very common deception method called "phishing".
The links in the mails are carefully constructed to appear to lead to the https secure websites of the relevant banks - however they are just a trick. Once there, you are invited to enter your details - and the scammer collects them and uses your identity and card details for whatever he desires - generally in fact, they are sold in batches to other crooks.
Some of the more modern versions are even more sneaky. They worked out that some people found it amusing to enter fake details into the dodgy websites, so they often embed trojans and similar nasties into the mails as well now.
The general advice for dealing with any unsolicited email is bin it. Don't open them.
According to what I was reading earlier today, it seems the crooks have also begun a similar trick using VOIP - the internet telephone thing. It is easy to fake a phone number to appear to be genuinely from a bank on VOIP systems - they ask for details because of a possible fraud attack on your account ..... you can guess the general patter.
My advice for telephone calls from the bank - even if they seem genuine - is to tell them you wish to call back to verify the person is genuine. Then ring a number for your bank department - e.g the fraud department and confirm they have actually made the call. I would not ring the number given by the originating caller unless it is confirmed by the bank itself.
It pays to be suspicious in this modern world, sadly.

Mark