Fraud alert

This could happen to you! I’m posting this blog entry because I recently received this email “from a friend.” Not the spelling mistakes, and note that the person asked for a wire transfer, and that the amount is not so excessive that one might not want to help.

Hello,

How are you doing?hope all is well with you and family, i am sorry i didn’t inform you about my traveling to England for a Seminar..

I need a favor from you because i misplaced my wallet on my way to the hotel where my money and other valuable things were kept i will like you to assist me with a soft loan urgently with the sum of $1,500 US Dollars to sort-out my hotel bills and get myself back home.

I will appreciate whatever you can afford and i’ll pay you back as soon as I return,Kindly let me know if you can be of help so that i can send you the details to use when sending the money through western union.

Your reply will be apprecaited.

Here was my immediate reply:

It’s no problem that you didn’t tell me you were going to England. And, I’m sorry to hear that you’re having trouble, and I have a couple of thoughts that might be worthwhile. By the way, I’m aware that you might possibly have had your e-mail account hacked.

First, where are you in England? Do you have a phone number where I can reach you, and speak with you to confirm that this request is really from you.

Second, why Western Union? It’s so darn expensive to wire money, and there are better ways. For example, why not touch base with your credit card companies, have them stop your accounts and then reissue on an emergency basis–then you could use your new credit card information to pay the hotel bills.

Third, possibly, I could pay one of the hotel bills via my credit card, but I would never do this without first speaking with you.

What I didn’t say was that I would report this to gmail, which I am doing.

A couple of important things:

• This happened because my friend used a password that was made up of dictionary words, which makes a password easy to hack. See this post on how to create a password that is not easily hackable.
• Second, I recommend having an e-mail account that you control that can cc: information to accounts like GMail or Yahoo. I use this service. Of course, you also need a strong password for this account. In this way, if someone hacks your other account, you can quickly eliminate the forwarding and in the interim, you can read your mail.
• Third, I recommend immediately notifying your email account holder. Typically, this is done by using something like spoof@TheNameOfYour e-mail service.
• Here’s a link to official instructions from GMail.
• After you get your Gmail account back in your hands, then I recommend that you go into gmail, and select the option that provides secure html access. Check the help in Gmail for how to do this.

Tags: e-mail, email, fraud, Fraud Alert, gmail, Google, phishing, spoof, wire transfer