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Nigerian Phishing Scam Resurfaces in Unusual Format

According to Sophos, which made a posting on its blog on July 20, 2009, the infamous Nigerian phishing scam has resurfaced but in a fresh format, although the e-mail campaign contains several features of the original attempts like capturing financial data off unwitting recipients.

Normally a Nigerian scam e-mail shows its sender as an executive representing a bank in Africa (The Republic of Benin situated in West Africa), solicits immediate help for transferring a huge sum of money to the recipient's account in a short span of 14 days, and provides communication details.

But, in the latest version, the scammer has committed an error in formatting the e-mail. Says Sophos, the e-mail constructor has placed the full message content inside the e-mail's 'From" field, leaving the actual portion of the message body blank.

One can hardly believe that an e-mail formatted in this odd manner would actually prove successful; however, things more strange than this have occurred. The phishing fraudsters have been maintaining that they have millions of dollars that they can spare to let air infiltrate the global market. But, the business is rather suspicious, as it swallows up mere minnows completely, Sophos explains.

Meanwhile, the notion supporting the new scam, just like the previous ones, is that at least one individual would be so gullible that he would actually respond with personal information such as bank account number to the e-mail sender i.e. the spammer, who would either hand over the information to other crooks for a good price or exploit it himself for carrying out financial fraud.

However, during 2007-08, Nigeria's EFCC (Electronic and Financial Crimes Commission) sent online scammers to prison, with the EFCC reporting of handling over 18,000 advanced-fee scam incidences during 2007, an increase by six times in only 4 years.

Nevertheless, while the efforts of EFCC might be stirring excitement, the Commission hasn't been able to prevent the scammers. In fact, the U.S federal agency, Internet Crime Complaint Center reported a rise in Nigerian perpetrated cyber-crimes in USA during 2008. But Internet usage in Nigeria is not even 7%, implying that Nigerian scammers are especially abundant.

Related article: Nigerian Scammers Secure Huge Money from Australian Victims

» SPAMfighter News - 8/11/2009

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