Latest scam alert..

Check this out....these are the lengths the scam artists on the net will go to to access your private financial details.This particular one, received today, is actually trying to capitalise on the grief of the many thousands of people who lost their lives in the tsunami disaster of 2004.Below is the copy of the e-mail i received from a so called QC in London.If you receive anything like this, which is obviously appealing to peoples greed, the real purpose of the e-mail is to secure your financial details.You can bet your bottom dollar that if you enter into any correspondence with this scum they will require your bank details to deposit your "inheritance".If you receive anything like this then just delete and/or block the sender.

Here is the copy of the e-mail...

Greetings!!!
I wish to seek your advice and guidance, if you could perhaps provide me detailed information as you share the same last name with our late client who died along with his entire family in December 26, 2004 during the Indian Ocean Tsunami Earthquake that occurred in the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia while on christmas vacation.

I am Courtenay Griffiths QC, an Attorney and the Personal lawyer to the deceased. I would like to know if you are related and I would be delighted to have you as the Next of Kin to the deceased. I have been mandated to provide his Next of Kin by his bankers because it is legally incumbent on me to do so as the attorney to the deceased.

I decided to take my chance with you to have you stand as his Next of Kin as I have secured from the Probate Registry an order of mandamus to locate any member of his family to stand as the Next of Kin and sole beneficiary of his deposit with the Bank.

Your earliest response is appreciated to enable me conclude this matter is good time without delays.

Thank you for your kind attention in anticipation of your response ASAP.

Regards,

Courtenay Griffiths QC
London.

In for a shilling in for a pound!!

Hi everyone.If you read my previous blog about the e-mail i received from e-bay then get this.I got another one today! This time the e-mail said that my account has been suspended for 7 days! They have said that im accused of shilling.Apparently shilling is the term used to denote the action of putting false bids on items purely to get the final price up..well as i said in my earlier post i havent used e-bay for over 6 months so my plea is "not guilty".The tell tell tale signs of this being a bogus e-mail.

1. No user name in the opening line!
2.No messages of the same type in the "My Messages" part on the actual site.
3.A suspect link to click on.

Unfortunately the e -mail had already been deleted from my mailbox so im not able to post a copy here! However i can assure you i did reply to the e-mail with the usual curses of modern society ..the sender was told where to go in no uncertain terms..Ok , i know it was bit childish ...but .... they started it!!

Im intrigued to see if they try another angle so i will be watching my mail box with avid interest in the next few days..

Needless to say ..i will keep you posted!

P.S. E-mail recovered...here is my reply to it......#

e-bayphish

This is a short blog to put in the public domain and warn people of the ever increasing scam called "phishing".This is fresh off the press so to speak. I have an e-bay account and sell the odd item from time to time.The last time i sold anything was over 6 months ago which in a way was a good thing becasue it alerted me to be suspicious of an e-mail i got today from supposedly e-bay about an undelivered item i was supposed to have sold in October!

Here is a picture of the e-mail(click on the picture in order to increase image size) so you can see how realistic it is.You may need to view using I.E. browser to see the screenshot......There are links to respond to the e-mail as you can see plus there are links on the url supposedly relating to the advert on e-bay.Needless to say i didnt click on the links.Besides not having listed any items on e-bay for over 6 months the other clue was that there is no e-bay user name anywhere in the e-mail.If it was a genuine and from e-bay my user name would have been on the first line of the e-mail.

As a further precaution to check the validity of mail from e-bay you need to close the browser dwon and then type in www.e-bay.com in the address bar.Enter your own e-bay id and password and then go to "my messages". Any correspondence from e-bay particularly disputes would always be in your message box.

I checked this and yes there have been no messages for over 6 months.What the purpose of this "phishing episode" was , i dont know....it could be they check for people who havent been online for a good while and once they have pinched your id etc they can then sell on e-bay in your name and never send any goods out.In cases of any future disputes then the "phisher " would have made money for nothing and i would have ended up trying to resolve the fraud....At an estimated cost of $800 according to a motley fool article (see link below)..plus not being able to use e-bay till the matter would be resolved to their satisfaction..

I have had one previous e-bay phish but that was completely different .On that occasion i copied the e-mail and returned it to the e-bay fraud department.....So i hope this has helped in some way especially if you are an e-bayer but anyone can fall victim to phishing.As you may or may not know ..identity theft is one of the fastest growing crimes worldwide...if any reader has had similar experiences or knows of any particular "phish" or scam at the moment please ad it to the comments on the blog and i will then post it for future readers....also check out this article which details ways of avoiding identity theft and what to do if you are a victim..

to be continued..