5 replies to this topic

[K&P]

We received an email from the Neighbourhood Watch yesterday, mentioning this scam and, lo and behold, I received that scam email today.

In brief:

It was supposedly from an old aquaintance. He said he had had a car crash in Spain, his driver had been killed and he needed money to get home.

This man isn't in my contact address book: so I guess they've hacked into his contact list.

Beware.

[David P]

This is a strange one in that the story varies slightly each time. This is the third time I've come across it - once a robbery, once a mugging and now a car crash, all in Spain. So it's not an ordinary virus that's propagating the same message, but someone is actually doing some work to rewrite it. Also, there is no link to a dodgy website - you have to reply to the message and the guy at the other end must then reply to you again, by which time, one would think, it would be fairly obvious that he wasn't in fact your dear friend.

The message I received appeared to come from a genuine email address - friendsname@yahoo.com. However friends actual address is friendsname@btinternet.com. Further confirmation of my long held belief that the BTInternet database has been accessed by spammers.

[PeterC]

This has been around for a while and has been mentioned on the radio in the past.

[mvjt]

I've had a few of these recently. All from rather vague acquaintances such as a woman from church, a medical advisor and someone who booked my son onto a tennis tournament 2 years ago. Each time the reply email is almost the same as that of the acquintance, such as sl_friiend@xxx.co.uk when the original address is sl_friend@ xxx.co.uk
i.e. only a single letter inserted.

They're quite common at the moment.

[K&P]

This is a strange one in that the story varies slightly each time. This is the third time I've come across it - once a robbery, once a mugging and now a car crash, all in Spain. So it's not an ordinary virus that's propagating the same message, but someone is actually doing some work to rewrite it. Also, there is no link to a dodgy website - you have to reply to the message and the guy at the other end must then reply to you again, by which time, one would think, it would be fairly obvious that he wasn't in fact your dear friend.

The message I received appeared to come from a genuine email address - friendsname@yahoo.com. However friends actual address is friendsname@btinternet.com. Further confirmation of my long held belief that the BTInternet database has been accessed by spammers.

Yes, it was very close to a friend's address at BTInternet.

K

Oh, and that friend isn't in my email address book - just in my old emails.

K

[Fran]

I've seen a couple of variants of this. With anything like this that raises even a smidgen of suspcion, it's always worth Googling the subject line or some other key phrase. Invariably, you'll find lots of links exposing it as a scam.