Canadian Woman Informs Police about Real Estate-based E-mail Scam

Waterloo Regional Police have recently received a report from a woman residing in Kitchener (Southern Ontario, Canada) that someone tried to deceive her by sending spam messages.

The woman revealed that she had received spam messages while searching for a home online in the first week of July 2009. She disclosed her name as well as personal details.

However, she got suspicious of the deal after she had received an e-mail that asked her to transfer money in the account of an unidentified person.

It is said that after the woman had got apprehensive about the deal, she applied her investigative skills and found that the home owner was suspicious.

Olaf Heinzel, Police Spokesperson, said that the home owners had indicated that it was not available for sale, as reported by therecord on July 6, 2009.

Hence, the sale was fake and advertisement posted online primarily meant to fool people.

Heinzel further said that there were potential risks involved while dealing on the Internet. Sometimes dealing on the Internet could not be trusted as the person with whom the dealing is going on not a genuine one.

Furthermore, these e-mail scams operate from outside the country which makes tracing them a difficult task. Police have advised the woman that she should lodge a formal complaint against the website hosting that advertisement.

Internet users need to be extremely careful while accessing information online and confirm the legitimacy of the website, said Heinzel.

Internet scams that dupe innocent users have become very common now-a-days.

Security experts have warned netizens that cyber criminals especially spammers advertise fake houses for sale through spam e-mails in bulk. They are confident of their techniques that someone would fall to them.

In fact, scammers are very intelligent in their methods as they take real ads and modify their details slightly so that they seem realistic to users.

Hence, there are few points that can be used by netizens to find out the legitimacy of home advertisement. For instance, if the price of a home is relatively low to the market price, then the deal should not be made. Secondly, if the home owner is asking to wire money before the deal is signed, then it is certainly a fake deal.

Related article: Canadian Retailer Faces Security Breach of Customer Credit Numbers

» SPAMfighter News - 7/18/2009