Calaveras County Sheriff’s Office Alerts About E-Mail Scam

The Sheriff's Office in Calaveras County (California) has cautioned local residents that an e-mail scam is probably circulating in the region. Lately, detectives at the Sheriff's Office got one complain from a woman based in Calaveras' Arnold area that someone hijacked her e-mail account and sent junk e-mails from it.

The fake message understandably used the header: "Help!!!" while narrating an unfortunate tale of the writer getting mugged whilst in a foreign country. It then urged the reader to wire money at the earliest so that the e-mail sender can clear hotel bills and purchase an airline ticket home.

And as the e-mail seemed like a message from a pal, in the current instance the woman, one friend, to say the least, from her address list wired the cash that, however, ended up reaching the hacker.

Meanwhile, Deputy Attorney General for Special Crimes in California, Robert Morgestar further described the e-mail fraud that's popularly called the "advance fee scam," "money-transfer scam," "emergency scam" or "stranded scam." According to him, the scam had evolved beyond an uninteresting snarl to one prominent problem. Co.calaveras.ca.us published this during the end-week of August 2010.

Morgestar's observation is as stated since when a scammer gets hold over the deceptively obtained money, the user can hardly do anything to either trace the criminal or regain the stolen money.

Worryingly, specialists from say PandaLabs the security company state that the most prevalent kind of Internet scam through e-mail is the "advance fee scam," which is also known as the "Nigerian scam."

Eventually, the best tactic that users can follow to remain protected from being victimized with such e-mail frauds and which FBI officials and security specialists equally advise is that users must treat all e-mails with skepticism when they arrive with tales of such sadistic nature.

Besides, users will do well to always verify an e-mail's authenticity over phone by talking to their friends or family members in case they want to help. Finally, if the e-mail proves to be false then they must send that message to the Federal Trade Commission at spam@uce.gov before discarding it permanently.

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» SPAMfighter News - 9/18/2010