Email Scam in Canada Following Bad Weather in Europe

Bad weather conditions in Europe resulting in flight cancellations and delays are adding advantage to cyber crooks is evident from the launch of email scams. Once the emails of netizens are hacked successfully, these hackers poses themselves as travelers and sends urgent messages seeking money signifies Sgt. Paul Proulx from Royal Canadian Mounted Police
(RCMP) as reported in the cbc.ca on December 22, 2010.

On December 22, 2010, Graham Withers, a resident of Canada reported to have received a mail from his friend Krista Muir, a Montreal musician, reports cbc.ca.

Muir has desperately asked for help saying that she was in a compromised situation while travelling due to theft of her bag, which carried her visa and passport. The desperate mail message did not strike to be a scam to Withers.

In response, when Withers asked her about the exact need, he received a mail seeking $2,000 and a plea to transfer the money through Western Union.

Later, Muir realized that her Gmail account has hacked and a similar plea mail was received by almost everyone in her contact list.

These are 419 scams and are called the "stranded traveler" scam, remarked the security experts. In these scams, the hackers supposedly steal someone's identity and request for big money from the users' friends. The convincing tone of the message received at the other end compels them to believe the compromised situation.

To counter similar fraudulence, security experts' advised netizens to cross check the situation by calling up their friends before transferring any money.

Further, disturbingly, this is not the first incidence in 2010, when a natural calamity has provided cybercrooks with a golden opportunity to launch bogus e-mail scams.

Back in April 2010 also, security vendor ESET, reported that, with several people being trapped globally due to the volcanic eruption in Iceland, cybercriminals mainly scam artists immediately came up with a modern scam based on the old theme of scamming people i.e. 'friend in need'. This scam was also an alternate of the modern fee fraud scam.

Conclusively, scam emails similar to the aforementioned instances have led to an increase in advance fee fraud emails, which accounted for 8.6% of the spams blocked by Microsoft during the second quarter if 2010.

Related article: Email Security – A Big Challenge to Companies & Individuals

» SPAMfighter News - 1/3/2011