Emergency Scams Cost Millions To Canadians

More profitable scams, which are currently scamming Canadians and called the grandparent scam or emergency scam, have victimized around 625 people since the beginning of the year (2010), causing a total loss of $2.1 Million.

The authorities state that the number of Canadians who've been victimized and thereby lost the amount is perhaps only a minute proportion of the entire lot.

These types of scams mostly have victims who get e-mails from a friend or family member. The e-mails urge for an immediate monetary assistance to be sent through wire-transfer.

Eric Park, Abuse Desk Analyst at Symantec, stated that the fraud e-mail had been circulating for the past 6-8 months which demonstrated how social engineering and intelligent spam were evolving, as reported by Winnipeg Free Press on June 2, 2010. Park added that the scammers as in the current instance were becoming increasingly sophisticated.

Elaborating on the way emergency scams work, security researchers stated that they began with the hacking of a user's e-mail account. Following the hack of an account, the scam artists dispatched junk e-mails to all those people whose e-mail IDs are included in the contact list of the user. These e-mails talk about a fake critical situation and ask for immediate assistance.

A particularly crafty hacker might even scan his victim's e-mail account so that some personal information could be found to make the scam more persuasive and convincing.

Thereafter, the scammer would pose as someone close and requests for immediate cash to get out of emergency circumstances such as being robbed or stranded overseas. The requirement of the cash was also described as meeting hotel fees, medical expenses, bail, etc.

According to Park, Internet users should remain guarded and know that there're always online attempts to deceive people. He said that the cyber-space was an extremely risky area where people could be convinced by such scams.

Hence, according to the security specialists, in case anyone gets an e-mail whose sender asks for money in the manner described above, he should first call the original person and find out if he indeed dispatched the e-mail appeal.

Related article: Emergence of Web 2.0 Increasing Security Concerns

» SPAMfighter News - 6/12/2010