Comments on: How To Deal with Spam and Report Email Scams in The U.S.

By: Costly Email Mistakes That You Need to Avoid | Industrial Cleaning Supplies

Costly Email Mistakes That You Need to Avoid | Industrial Cleaning Supplies — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 06:06:04 +0000

[...] Take A Stand Against Spam And Report Email Scams In The U.S. (makeuseof.com) [...]

By: john from iowa

john from iowa — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 07:50:53 +0000

Oh, I’ve seen them all. I’m like a magnet for these things, yet when I talk to some other people, they say that they’ve never heard of them, yet they claim to use email all the time. WTF? How can this be? I’ve never responded to any of this balderdash yet I keep getting nuked, mortered, and dumb-bombed daily without any warning. What am I doing wrong? And yeah, like I have time to label every one “spam”. sure. You ougtta see my REAL spem folder. it has over 74,000 unread messages. And I don’t even bite on the “get a free laptop if you spend the equivelent of 12 new lap-tops crap”. What’s going on? Why me? All I use me email for is to contact my family and THAT’S IT. Yet to find those messages I have to sort through BILLIONS OF UNWANTED JUNK. Then my family wants to know why I misses their email. Well of course I missed it, sorting through 8 trillion other messages. Lord almighty. -john in iowa

By: Sonny

Sonny — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 23:20:54 +0000

I have email seem came from UK it read like this

FROM DESK OF JOHN FREEMAN‏
From: JOHN FREEMAN (john@imff.info)
Medium riskYou may not know this sender.Mark as safe|Mark as junk
Sent: Sunday, 16 August 2009 2:40:11 AM
To:

FROM DESK OF JOHN FREEMAN
DIRECTOR OF INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND
REGIONAL OFFICE FOR INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND
142-146 STOKE NEWINGTON HIGH STREET
LONDON UNITED KINGDOM

Good Day

RE-OUTSTANDING PAYMENT

This is to inform you of your Long overdue Payment outstanding our Banking records . I saw your name in the Central Computer among list of unpaid inheritance claims individuals and have to update your informations through this email contact for immediate confirmation .

Your name appeared among the beneficiaries who will receive a part-payment of US$40,000,000.00 million (Fourty million United State dollars) and it has been approved already for payment months ago. However we received an email from one John Brown who told us thathe is your next of kin and that you died in a car accident last four months back .

He has also submitted his account informations to the office department for transfer of the fund to him as your inheritor. We are now verifying by contacting your email address as we have in our Bank recordsbefore we can make the transfer into his account and for us to conclude confirmation ifyou are dead or not. Please , confirmresponse immediately before our action release of the outstanding payment against your name listed out .

Upon this, i request you send your full personal information as soon as possible to enable this department finalize the transfer of the fund release to your nominated foreign Bank Account. This department needs the following informations from you urgently.

1.Full Names ……….

2.Telephone Or Fax Number……….

3.Contact Address……….

4.Age……….

5.Occupation……….

6.Sex……….

CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This E-Mail is intended only for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed and may contain information that is privileged,confidential and exempt from disclosure under applicable law. Once again, I apologize to you on behalf of International Monetary fund Agency towards this contact and proper confirmation required urgently from you if alive.

Thanks,
Yours Sincerly

DIRECTOR OF INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND
REGIONAL OFFICE FOR INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND
+447024018649

By: Ryan Dube

Ryan Dube — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 01:30:54 +0000

Excellent advice Rex, thanks for your comments.

By: Rex

Rex — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 13:47:15 +0000

Nothing, but nothing beats plain simple common sense.
You don’t even have to bother looking at email headers. Spam is refered to as ‘Unsolicited commercial mail’- stress being on ‘unsolicited’.
Remember the following rules:
1)If you bank or Paypal have to contact you- they will refer to you by name or account. They already have your details, constructing a mail with the name of each customer is trivial. A scammer will obviously not know your actual name since he is sending the same piece of crap to a zillion people.

2) No company you deal with EVER has any need to ask for your password via email for any reason whatsoever. They OWN the servers that you logon to, if they need to perform any maintenance or upgrade they can quite well do so without asking you to click on some shady link.
3) (Basic human nature) If something sounds too good to be true, REST ASSURED THAT IT IS.
4) Legitimate and well known companies don’t need chain letters to pass on information about their services, they would issue a press release on their website. This is for those inbred morons who still continue to forward ‘Bill gates will pay you/Ericson will give free phones/Some syphilitic kid can be saved- if you only forward this mail to others’ type of mails.