Email Scam Attacked Hightown Couple through Hacking

A report by crosbyherald.co.uk in December 2011 said that, a hightown uk based couple had become a victim of email hacking scam.

Using the couple's yahoo email account, the fraudsters send message to 100 of their friends, family and workmates saying that they had been held up at gunpoint in Malaga.

The message claiming from the couple, requested for 2,850 euros be wired to western union money transfer office to utilize in hotels and taxi fares to get back to their home.

The call of their concerned friends helped them to make out that they are being hacked.

What made the message genuine was the fact that the couple had recently been in Malaga (Andalusia Spain), where they stopped off as a fraction of cruise.

On the report of crosbyherald.co.uk of December 2011: the female said that its been so painful that I spent all the day on phone to concerned friends and family. Fortunately no one paid money prior calling us - but if we had still in Malaga when this happened who knows what would have people thought?

Unluckily, the couple was knock by the stranded abroad traveler's scam, it is one of the well identified variant of the famous advance fee fraud, commented by security expert.

A hacker in the scam gets the control of victim email password and so in their web based email account (for instance in the above case yahoo email id) using the victim email address, the hacker sends out a message to everyone in his address book. This is message request for help as it says that " I am in overseas (for example Malaga in above case), and all my credit cards have been stolen moreover the hotel is asking its money" -- since it comes from a friend, chances are good enough that at least one kind and nice person among the victim's whole email list will react with some kind of help.

So to reduce the probability of becoming the victim of such scam, the expert advised to get in touch with the website (yahoo in above case) to resolve how to restore control over their own account. Moreover the victim friends are advised not to send money before calling their friend and confirm whether they genuinely need money or not.

Related article: Email Security – A Big Challenge to Companies & Individuals

» SPAMfighter News - 1/4/2012

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