Emails coming from legitimate users, known to the victim, have been spotted to deliver messages asking for money that would get the alleged friend out of some sort of trouble.


Cybercriminals started to hijack email accounts and use them to perpetrate this type of scam.

In one of the messages seen by Christopher Boyd from Malwarebytes, the sender pretended to be in a bit of a jam in a foreign country and required some money in order to settle hotel bills and catch a flight home.

Because the potential victim sees that the sender is a friend, the scam’s rate of success is likely to increase, especially with a well-crafted text.

In the sample presented by Boyd, the crook got hold of the email account of the recipient’s landlord and asked for financial aid to get back home, from Istanbul. The fictitious reason was that some robbers took all their money and mobile phones, leaving the passport, though.

With no money in the pocket, the landlord has to pay for the hotel. Despite contacting the embassy, it appears that settling the hotel bill is all that stands between the landlord and the flight back home.

The security researcher says that the email address of the landlord had been compromised and used for spreading the deceitful message to all contacts available.

“This tactic has been around for years, and is often found on social networks where close connections add a sense of trust and ‘oh no, my poor friend’ to the proceedings,” he said.

Such scams are generally easy to spot, especially when the message comes from someone close, whose whereabouts are known to the recipient.

Scammers do not spend time analyzing communication, and in most cases, they recycle text from other campaigns, setting off the alarm bells of a potential victim.

All users have a particular way to write messages when using a digital form of communication, and spotting a change is not too much of an effort.

Also, since text is recycled from one campaign to another, searching it on Google before deciding to reply is always a good idea.

“Checking with mutual contacts to see if they received the same message is often suggested as evidence of fake messages, but keep in mind that someone desperate for help with no phone access could well decide to send a message to as many of their contacts as possible,” writes the security researcher.

He also suggests establishing a specific word that should be used in emergencies when communicating via email or mobile text; this way the recipient will be sure about the legitimacy of the message.
Kepler Reviewed by Kepler on . Email Scam Uses Legitimate Sender Address http://i1-news.softpedia-static.com/images/news-700/Email-Scam-Uses-Legitimate-Sender-Address.jpg Emails coming from legitimate users, known to the victim, have been spotted to deliver messages asking for money that would get the alleged friend out of some sort of trouble. Cybercriminals started to hijack email accounts and use them to perpetrate this type of scam. In one of the messages seen by Christopher Boyd from Malwarebytes, the sender pretended to be in a bit of a Rating: 5