New online scam - Hit-man threatens to kill you if you don’t pay him.
June 21, 2007
What do you hate more? Collection agencies, spammers or actually spammers-scammers (did I just invent a new word)?
There’s a new scam out there. We all know the Nigerian ones where they can’t find the heir of a millionaire and ask your help to transfer that money. I’ve even started conversation with one of them, but I think I bored him and he stopped emailing me back, or he just figured out I was messing with him.
This new scam threatens to kill recipients if they don’t pay the sender.
Agent Shore, from the FBI, says about the scams:
“(They) are an opportunity to raise awareness about Internet fraud.” The best defense is to protect your personal information as best you can and to delete—unopened—unsolicited SPAM e-mail.
This made me ask myself 2 questions:
How vulnerable do I feel?
How scared would you be if someone knew your email, your home address, where you work and your kids’ names? Even as a scam, it still frightens me to know that someone can find so much information about me and my family.
Some of the ways spammers use to collect emails are through email harvesting and illegal database purchases. So if you use your work email address to register for those free newsletters and to post messages on message boards, you might want to rethink that.
I know it’s convenient (I still get some newsletters at work), but if you use your work address, they can figure out where you work. And through that, they can most likely figure your name. With your name and where you work, how difficult is it to figure the rest?
What if instead of spammers, they were actual criminals? It’s the same principle as kidnap-ransom, but less risky for them. They study you and your family and instead of kidnapping your kids, they threaten to do it. Or what if they’re just identity thieves?
Right now, I feel quite vulnerable.
How private is my life on the web?
How much does Google make it easier for these criminals?
Do you have a blog? Do you own a home? There are public records available linking your name to your home address. What about those people-searching companies? For $30, they’ll provide all the information they have about you.
I remember googling (when did this become a verb again?) my name a few years ago to figure out what potential employers might find about me. Back then, there wasn’t anything. But I just did it again, and my Amazon profile popped up as well as my LinkedIn profile. Scary, eh?
Do you know how much information is available out there just by googling your name, phone number or email? You might want to check that out. Maybe there’s just too much information and you might want to contact those companies or change your profile to private (I’ve just changed my LinkedIn profile to private). Even if you’re not worried about this latest scam, you might want to consider how easy it would be to steal your identity with all the information available out there.
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June 23rd, 2007 at 9:45 am
ROFL! at the scammers that threaten to kill you. What is the best email service that weeds out all the spam…I use hotmail, which is very good, but not perfect, is there any better out there do u reckon?
June 23rd, 2007 at 4:26 pm
Most Email providers seems to use the same spam filter (Spam Assassin, Brightmail, etc), so I don’t think they would differ much from the other.
If you’re really worried about spamming, I would suggest you spend a few bucks a year to get an email service that allows you to create aliases. That will allow you to simply kill an alias once it starts receiving spam. It will also allow you to identify which company is “sharing” your email.