E-mail Fraud : The Menace

In Our present day World internet has become a part and parcel of our daily life. We cannot imagine a life without internet. Gone are the days of using written letters and applications whether for family matters or love affairs or job matter. Now-a-days we accomplish almost all our requirement of sending and receiving letters and applications via E-mail. E-mail has brought revolution in our life. With e-mail we can send our job-application directly to the employer within a second. We can file any complain online via e-mail directly to the concerned authorities without any mediator. We accomplish almost all our business, financial, family, educational, personal correspondence through e-mail. Where Internet is serving us with lots of benefits, such as email communication, online banking, online shopping, online bill payments, paying online premiums, online movie download, online music listening, and various other such benefits, it is also making our life difficult enough with Internet frauds, Internet Scams, and Email Scams. Every day we get mail from unknown persons or organization offering us money or job in return of a limited amount of security money deposit, these are E-mail Frauds. E-mail fraud most popularly known as Nigerian 419 scam has become a menace in the internet.

According to “en.wikipedia.org”, different forms of E-mail Frauds are:

1. e-mail spoofing:

E-mail sent from someone pretending to be someone else is known as spoofing. Spoofing may take place in a number of ways. Common to all of them is that the actual sender's name and the origin of the message are concealed or masked from the recipient. Many, if not most, instances of e-mail fraud use at least minimal spoofing, as most frauds are clearly criminal acts. Criminals typically try to avoid easy traceability.

2. Phishing for data:

Some spoof messages purport to be from an existing company, perhaps one with which the intended victim already has a business relationship. The 'bait' in this instance may appear to be a message from 'the fraud department' of, for example, the victim's bank, which asks the customer to: "confirm their information"; "log in to their account"; "create a new password", or similar requests. If the 'fish' takes the 'bait', they are 'hooked' -- their account information is now in the hands of the con man, to do with as they wish. See Phishing.

3. Bogus offers:

E-mail solicitations to purchase goods or services may be instances of attempted fraud. The fraudulent offer typically features a popular item or service, at a drastically reduced price.

Items may be offered in advance of their actual availability, for instance, the latest video game may be offered prior to its release, but at a similar price to a normal sale. In this case, the "greed factor" is the desire to get something that nobody else has, and before everyone else can get it, rather than a reduction in price. Of course, the item is never delivered, as it was not a legitimate offer in the first place.

Such an offer may even be no more than a phishing attempt to obtain the victim's credit card information, with the intent of using the information to fraudulently obtain goods or services, paid for by the hapless victim, who may not know they were scammed until their credit card has been "used up".

4. Requests for help:

The "request for help" type of e-mail fraud takes this form. An e-mail is sent requesting help in some way, but including a reward for this help as a "hook," such as a large amount of money, a treasure, or some artifact of supposedly great value.

This type of scam has existed at least since the Renaissance, known as the "Spanish Prisoner" or "Turkish Prisoner" scam. In its original form, this scheme has the con man purport to be in correspondence with a wealthy person who has been imprisoned under a false identity, and is relying on the confidence artist to raise money to secure his release. The con man tells the "mark" (victim) that he is "allowed" to supply money, for which he should expect a generous reward when the prisoner returns. The confidence artist claims to have chosen the victim for their reputation for honesty.

Other form of fraudulent help requests is represented by romance scam. Under this, fraudsters (pretended males or females) build online relationships, and after some time, they ask for money from the victims, claiming the money is needed due to the fact they have lost their money (or their luggage was stolen), they have been beaten or otherwise harmed and they need to get out of the country to fly to the victim's country.

This confidence trick is similar to the face-to-face con, known as the "Stranger With a Kind Face," which is the likely origin of at least the title of the vaudevillian routine known by the same name, as "Niagara Falls," or as "Slowly I turned..."

The modern e-mail version of this scam, known variously as the "Nigerian scam", "Nigerian All-Stars," etc., because it is typically based in Nigeria, is an advance fee fraud. The lottery scam is a contemporary twist on this scam.

As per scamdex.net, Scamdex sorted  it's huge archive of email scams into six classifications:

1. Advance Fee Fraud : A 'nominal' payment is required to 'release' some much larger amount which is held by a third party. Any transaction that promises a huge return for a relatively small fee is probably an Advance Fee Fraud, also known as 'Nigerian' or '419 Fraud'.

      There is no 'millions', Mrs Abacha doesnt have the money either.

 2. Lottery Scams: Payment is required to get your huge unsolicited lottery winnings transferred into your country/bank account. If you are told you have won some random email lottery, or a lottery that you don't remember entering, you are probably being set up for a Lottery Scam. Microsoft, BMW, HP, Google etc. DO NOT DO LOTTERIES!Fools Gold - a pile of Gold Bricks

      There are no 'winnings' , except for the scammer!. NEW!! Check your Lottery at Scamalot.com

3. Phishing: Official-looking emails from banks, retailers and other online services, including Facebook, eBay, MySpace, PayPal, Chase Bank etc) which ask you to 'confirm' some details or which are warning you that your account needs some kind of immediate action. Once they have your login details, they can raid your bank, use online accounts as spam engines or hijack your good name for selling/buying.

      Often asks for credit card details. These are then used or sold on.

 4. Auction Scams: Simple scams using eBay or Craigslist to take either your money, your property or both. May use hijacked accounts with good customer feedback obtained by Phishing to give false confidence..

      Watch out for 'Second Chance Offers' on auctions you did not win!

 5. Employment Scams: Employment is usually offered processing international payments, promising to let you keep 10% as comission. You pay the (fake) checks into your bank and send them your good money. By the time the bank bounces the check, your money s gone - almost always demands Western Union payments!.

      The check turns out to be a fake or you get prosecuted for Money Laundering!.

6. Financial/Investment Scams: Including High Yield Investment Plans (HYIPs), Ponzi Schemes, Fake 'Affiliate' schemes and Molti-Level Marketing (MLM) scams. Basically offering huge unrealistic returns on investments which turn out to be fraudulent, illegal or non-existent. Solicitations almost always by Spam emails, often uses 'meta-cash' like e-Gold etc.

These e-mail frauds are  looting millions of people in India and the World every day with their criminal act of cheating and thug. In India, internet has reached in the far anterior places of rural area but the people are not aware of cyber crime and due to this reason innumerable persons are becoming victim of these e-mail frauds. Even in urban area also people are not aware of these cyber crimes and with the greed of getting huge amount of winning money or a highly paid salary, becomes the victim of these e-mail frauds. Most of the time fraudulent mail comes asking for bank account/ credit card/ debit card/ demat account/ATM card? personal details pretending that such mail has been sent from the concerned bank or RBI but actually these are fraudulent and sent from a fake ID.

            The Information Technology Act, 2000 made provision for penalty of such fraudulent act and other Cyber crimes but the fact is that these e-mail frauds are operating either from another country or from fake ID, due to this reason it is almost impossible to trace such criminals once they have committed the crime and victimized someone. So, it is very much necessary to spread the awareness of such Cyber crimes and to make the common people aware of not to be enticed by such e-mail frauds and to be wise before replying to such fraudulent email and never to give bank account/ credit card/ debit card/ ATM card/ demat Account/ personal detail to any such fraudulent e-mailer.

Pronoy Kumar Ghose

Advocate

References:

1.Cyber Law & Crimes by Barkha, U. Rama Mohan

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail_fraud

3. http://www.scamdex.com