Yahoo!7 Mail & Messenger Blog

Tips for Spotting Online Scams

February 16th, 2009 Filed in: Security 5 comments

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We’ve all received scam messages via email and it really is quite scary the number of people who fall victim to scams – almost 3 million a year in the UK alone!

It is currently Scams Awareness Month in the UK, so we bring you this post from Andrew of the Yahoo! Mail Team who handles both the UK and US Mail Blogs:

This month in the UK, the Office of Fair Trade is promoting their annual Scams Awareness Month. In support of their efforts, I’ve posted some scam avoidance tips on the UK Mail Blog. Since they apply just as much across the pond as they do State-side, I wanted to share them with you too. The first step in helping you to stay scam-free is to recognize the types of scams that are out there. Here are the three most common types that come in email form (which I’m sure some of you have seen before):

1. Phishing scams – These are email scams that claim to be from an organization, like a bank, and they ask you click on a link which takes you to a Website that looks real but is, in fact, fake. When you log in with your account details and password on this fake site, the bad guys gain access to your private information.
2. Lottery Scams – These are emails that tell you have won a local or foreign lottery and to get the money you have to pay processing fees and send personal details.
3. Advance fee or fund transfer schemes – These are also called Nigerian ‘419’ scams where you receive an email, often times from someone claiming to be in Africa or Asia, and claiming that they have access to huge sums of cash but need your help getting it out of the country. In this scam, the criminal offers to send you a check for $100,000 and you send him back a personal check for $90,000 and keep the difference. The scam is, of course, that the initial check is bogus but may take several weeks to clear, by which point the criminal is long gone with your money.

You know what? Your bank will NEVER ask you for a password in an email, you have NOT won the lottery and all you end up with for those huge sums is a ZERO balance in your bank account.

Still not sure if an email is really a scam? In collaboration with Mark our Anti-Spam Czar, Andrew has also posted some excellent tips on how to identify scam emails along with some examples of what they may look like. Head on over to the Yahoo! UK Mail Blog to read more

The most important piece of advice we can give you is, never act upon anything in these sorts of emails and never reply to them.  If you should ever receive such an email, please be sure to pass it on to us via this form.

Happy Identifying,
Kate – Yahoo!7 Mail Team