Sometimes a message will be obviously be a scam, but if this technique didn’t work scammers wouldn’t try it. If you see a message that feels off, it probably is. The most classic example is the “Nigerian Prince” scam, where a scammer will claim to need your help to transfer some large amount of funds and will give you a percentage of the transferred amount for your time. They ask for your bank account information, and surprise surprise they just steal your money.
These scams work by promising a hefty sum of money for little effort on the part of the victim, and often plays on the victims’ emotions. It’s not always a Nigerian prince – it could be a woman displaced by war crimes that needs your help, or an exciting business proposition. Usually a message like this will be caught by your email provider’s spam filters, which look at emails that come in and identify those that look like known junk mail. If such a message does find its way to your inbox, the burden falls on you to make a good decision. Most people, if asked if such a message seems suspicious, will say yes. Still it is estimated that nearly a million dollars per year are stolen using this technique in the US. Often, these emails will be accompanied with threats of blackmail or threats of impersonation.
In the image above, there are a few things that stand out. The first thing is the scammer is wanting to transfer a large amount of money. This should be a big red flag for anyone who has heard of these scams. Next, they claim the victim is known to be reliable and trustworthy. The victim certainly does not know Miss Naomi Surugaba and by being contacted out of the blue has done nothing to prove this. At the end of the email, Naomi asks the email recipient to send mail to an alternative account rather than the one the email was (supposedly, more about this in another post) sent from.
You can see by the mentions of family deaths and loss of ability to stay in school as a medical student, the scammer is pulling on the heart strings of their victim. The slightly broken English in this email is not a dead giveaway that it’s a scam email since it is from a foreign person. If it was from your bank and written like this, you should be wary. It is natural to want to help someone in a bad spot, especially if you are going to get $800,00 for doing practically nothing. Remember, if something sounds too good to be true, it is.
Protecting yourself
Like most of what will be discussed on this page, just having knowledge about scams like these is the best way to combat them. Here’s a list of things to keep in mind when you are reading emails.
- Never send money, account information, or copies of personally identifiable information to people you do not already know, trust, or do business with.
- Do not agree to transfer money for someone. Not only is it probably a scam, money laundering is illegal.
- If you agree to some upfront payment for something online, be careful how you pay for it. Your credit card is probably your best bet because credit companies take scams seriously. Never pay a stranger via money order, international wire, bitcoin, or prepaid gift cards such as Google Play cards. Prepaid gift cards are the preferred way recently for scammers to steal money. The funds are basically impossible to recover once you give them the card.
- If something seems fishy, run it by someone you trust.
- If you want to research a company or organization a fishy email claims to represent, do not use any links inside the email. Use Google to search for the business and their contact information. Scammers will send you to sites that may look legitimate but really only exist to trick you into sending them your passwords.
- If you suspect a message is a scam, do not reply to it. Many scammers are masters of manipulation and once they have your attention they may be able to fool you.
- Business deal seems to good to be true? It is.
Links to email safety articles:
