RGP Alerts Residents of ‘Stranded Traveler’ Scam E-Mail

The Royal Gibraltar Police (RGP) has issued an alert to residents of Gibraltar for being watchful about a phishing electronic mail that's presently circulating online. Chronicle.gi reported this on June 29, 2011.

It seems someone hijacked a Facebook account and sent a fraudulent e-mail to everyone on that account's contact list.

Apologizing to the recipient for making an odd request, the scam e-mail describes the sender's apparently terrible situation for which the e-mail is so urgent. It states that the sender with his family is stranded in Spain while on a holiday since they've been robbed off their bags, cell-phones, credit cards and money. Consequently, the writer needs help for buying his airline tickets along with his family's to return home. Although there's still a certain amount of cash within their bank accounts, they're unable to access it from their current location, the e-mail states.

Moreover, the message says that little support came from the authorities and though the writer and his family's passports are still valid they're short of cash for paying the hotel expenses thus far. Hence, it's being urged that the recipient lend the writer 1,650 pounds that he'll repay immediately on returning home.

Disturbingly, the above scam, according to RGP, is called the "Stranded Traveler" fraud, an incarnation of the notorious 419 scam or "advance fee fraud," remark security researchers.

Additionally the researchers say that in a "stranded traveler" scam, cyber-criminals impersonate someone's identity followed with imploring that individual's contacts to wire money like within the above mentioned instance, the Facebook account of somebody has been hacked into with his acquaintances getting the infamous fraud e-mail.

Essentially, the hackers attempt at persuading the e-mail recipients that a friend, a colleague or a relative sent the message and that they are in dire circumstances typically abroad, similar to the aforementioned instance where the impersonators claim to be stuck in Spain.

Nevertheless, in all the instances, the particular e-mails are illegitimate.

Therefore, specialists on Internet security advice online users for being skeptical about such e-mails, as also verify from the person if he's really abroad and whether he's been truly robbed.

» SPAMfighter News - 07-07-2011

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