Murwillumbah Inhabitant Gets “Stranded Abroad” Scam E-Mail

Retired man George Anderson of Murwillumbah (New South Wales, Australia) was taken aback the day he got one electronic mail from the account of his son apparently on vacation in Indonesia; however, forced to visit Spain immediately. Mydailynews.com.au reported this on May 14, 2011.

Mr. Anderson found that the e-mail in which his son apologized for not informing him of his tour to Spain stated that the writer was in certain problems in Spain as he lost his wallet while returning to his hotel.

Consequently, there was a request for $3,980 with which the writer could clear his hotel bills as also return home as the embassy of Australia apparently declined to help. The e-mail also provided an address where the money could be sent in Seville (Spain).

Unluckily, cyber-criminals hacked into the e-mail of Anderson's son followed with the compromise of his list-of-contacts, security researchers point out.

The mode-of-operation employed in the scam referred to as the "stranded abroad" e-mail fraud actually runs quite sophisticatedly. For, scams of these kinds attempt at exploiting the recipient's compassion via asserting that the writer is someone in dire difficulty like in the incident of Anderson's son who's in a far-off place without money. Thus it's best to avoid answering these fake electronic mails since that would indicate to the scammers that the e-mail id making the response is really valid.

"Stranded abroad" scams normally display other more common hints of fraud too such as headers in capital letters and poor language use that's not necessarily English.

Remarking about the highly-advanced fraud, Anderson stated that he was truly astonished at the way it happened, yet the worrying issue was that they'd seized his son's contact list and possibly sent e-mails to many more people. Mydailynews.com.au reported this.

Eventually according to security researchers, recipients of such e-mails should send the e-mail to International Conference on Contemporary Computing at their website namely http://www.ic3.gov/default.aspx. This website records e-mail frauds as well as cautions others regarding the same. So if end-users follow the measure it'll assist the Police during their efforts at catching the culprits responsible for the scam e-mails.

Related article: Maryland Comptroller, IRS Alert about phishing E-mail Targeting Military Employees

» SPAMfighter News - 5/21/2011