New E-mail Scam Hit Two New Zealand Businessmen

Two businessmen from Greymouth (New Zealand) were stunned when a fraudulent e-mail scam dispatched a pleading message from one's e-mail account to the other.

Gary Hopkinson, an architect, got an e-mail message supposedly from Lynn Whyte, a business associate and Greymouth builder, requesting for money and saying he required it as help during his forced stay abroad, as reported by nzherald on March 25, 2009.

Usually, fraudulent e-mails misspell a name or use the correct name with an incorrect e-mail ID, but this particular message showed the sender's address correctly as that of Mr. Whyte.

IT experts said that a virus possibly had corrupted the Hotmail account of Mr. Whyte. Thus, the fake e-mail said Mr. Whyte had been robbed while in the foreign country of Alabama and so he desperately needed help. But Mr. Whyte stated everything in the e-mail is false, as he had neither gone to Alabama nor robbed.

Nonetheless, the phishing e-mail, which begins with supposed apologies to Mr. Hopkinson for missing out on describing to him about Mr. Whyte's holiday, requests Mr. Hopkinson to send at least some part of the money if the full amount is not possible. Subsequently, promising that Whyte would pay back the money on his return, the message suggests the money be sent through Western Union.

Commenting on the point, Brent Oldham, owner of security company ITWork, stated that a computer worm in the wild had been capturing usernames and passwords of Hotmail accounts although Hotmail was generally a safer e-mail system, as reported by stuff on March 24, 2009.

Oldham continued that in common scams, the miscreant would hack into the computer database, pick up names and then construct e-mails in those names, making them look like messages from someone familiar.

Oldham suggests that the most important point is to maintain anti-spyware and antivirus software up-to-date. According to him, if one gets an e-mail saying that someone needs money or that the recipient has won a cash prize, then common sense should be applied and the person contacted directly.

Related article: New Zealand Releases Code To Reduce Spam

» SPAMfighter News - 4/4/2009