So far, the emails that have been sent congratulating someone for winning a lottery constitute 10% of this year’s sent emails according to the MessageLabs. This is actually three times more than that of last year. According to some, the economic crisis, which has started off at the end of the year, is among the most influential factors in the rapid increase in the number of emails with finance-related spams.
Kinds of email fraud
A spam claiming that you “win a million” is not just the only kind of email fraud online. In fact, there are actually many kinds of email fraud. One of these is this is spoofing. This fraudulent act involves the use of other people’s data to transact online.
In spoofing, the sender’s name and email address is altered or concealed from the recipient. Another kind of email fraud involves bogus offers. In this email fraud, items and services are offered for lower prices as baits to lure people in believing to the bogus offer. Usually, the purpose of this kind of email is to convince some people to divulge their credit card and bank account numbers. There is also the so-called phishing for data. In this kind of email fraud, the cyber criminal extracts information from the victim by making the victim believe that the authority requires some information about him or her.
Preventing email fraud
You have to be skeptical about email messages from unknown sources. You should not share your email accounts and passwords to other people. It is also important that you enable your anti-spam and anti-spyware so you won’t be an easy target for hackers.