I don’t know whether it still happens but there used to be a method for a hacker to steal your address book from your computer as a result of you clicking on a link in an email, or on a website. Once they have that, they can send out messages appearing to be you to the people in your address book asking for help. One of the clues it has happened is finding a copy of your address book on your desktop and wondering why it is there.
The following is an example of a spoofed email address where someone substitutes another email address for their real email address and sends a message. In this case I have substituted the real email address for another one to retain privacy.
The person whom this relates to, I know vaguely, they used to be a client several years ago. The hacker/ spammer in this case knows there is a relationship between me and the person whose address book he has acquired. But he does not know the depth of the relationship.
I knew this was not real from the first email, because I have seen them before. As you can see, they wanted money, so I played along for a bit.
Email 1. The Bait
I receive the message, recognise the email address and the person, but as you can see the message does not have any more info in. I suspect it is not real, but I respond anyway, note my response is also very short. But note what has happened with the email address. It has changed from barnaby97@yahoo.co.uk to barnaby97@hotmail.com this confirms that someone was spoofing the real email address. Now all mail will go to an email account the hacker controls.
Taking the Bait
Reel ’em in
Acknowledge the news
The response: Spelling out what they need….
It is easy to see how people can get pulled in by this type of scam. If you ever get anything remotely like this, always pick up the phone and call them direct to check if the message is genuine. In this case, I could not send a message to the (original) email address in case it was compromised by the hacker. I did not have a telephone number I could use to call them independently.
Take care, especially during these times where we are very dependent on electronic communications.