Email scammers never give up

(This is the Online column, written for The Southland Times)

That farmer bloke up north might have won $28.7 million in the Powerball draw last week but I’ve had an even more exciting week, with lots of lottery wins and a new friend in Nigeria.

My email inbox brings such an extraordinary range of delights every day that I’m barely able to contain my excitement as I wait for my new message to download. This week I’ve won three national lotteries and for a small fee I can claim my squillions of dollars in winnings in various currencies, which is pretty stunning considering I didn’t even buy tickets in the lotteries.

Then there’s my new Nigerian friend, who seems to be a very nice bloke. He needs a little help with some stashed money and if I provide that help he’ll give me a cut.

Even better, I’ve also had a couple of emails from lovely ladies who reckon they’ve seen my profile online and want to be my  friend. I hope they aren’t just after my money.

And let’s not forget the ”we need to verify your details” emails from assorted banks, none of them the bank I actually use.

It’s easy to say people shouldn’t be gullible or silly enough to fall for these scams, but they do.
I’ve been using the web for a long time and have what I reckon is a healthy level of cynicism, but not everyone is the same.

There are plenty of people out there who haven’t seen the same old scams in their email inbox a hundred times before, or who don’t twitch with suspicion when they get one of these emails.

It’s interesting that Symantec’s October State of Spam and State of Phishing report shows that while spam levels for September were down just a squidge on August (down to 89.4 from 92.51 per cent of all messages sent were spam), phishing increased by 52 per cent.

The scammers are out there and they want both your money and your identity. They use and reuse their scams because they work.

Be careful out there and make sure you aren’t the next victim.