online and e-mail scams/phishing attempts

[Conrad]

I don't know about the rest of you guys but I get these all the time. Most get filtered out with my spam filter but some still get through. This is a new one that I've not seen before.

Have any of you noticed that a lot of these e-mail scams use crazy fonts in the subject line? You can tell it's BS before you even open it. Some of them have blatant misspellings and they're easy to identify. One would think that if you're trying to rip someone off that you'd make the e-mail in question as realistic as possible, right?

Here's the new one I mentioned. It appears to come from the USPS.


Dear Customer ,

We're sorry to let you know that your package which arrived on 03/27/2021 will be sent back ,

This may happen when the address is incorrect.

To place a re-delivery request for this package, please fill out the form on our website.

Check This Now    <=====(this was a link in the e-mail to click on in order to 'fix' the issue. When moused over it had some really crazy URL)

NOTICE: Please note, that if a redelivery is not scheduled within 48 hours, you can't submit a redelivery request again. The shipping and handling fees will not be refunded.



If the Post Office received a package for me but the address was wrong, would they contact me and tell me that the address was wrong and then return the package to sender? Or, since they know that it's for me, would they just deliver the package to what they know to be my address? Scammers aren't all that logical.

[VirginiaJim]

Evidently I have better scammer protection as I don't see any of those idiotic requests getting through on my gmail account or work account.


Phone scamming on the other hand I do get...  I'm still waiting on the IRS to show up at my door.....even made cookies.

[maxtog]

I have many Email accounts-

Work (under my own server and control)
Home (Cox)
Hotmail
Gmail (I really don't use this for anything)
(And several others)

I get such scams on all but the Gmail, but I don't use it for anything except to maintain an Android account.  So I can't speak to if they are better than the others.  I suspect they ARE much better at examining, harvesting, and aggrigating sensitive information about the users, but that is an entirely different topic.

99% of the time all you have to do is look at the URL before clicking on what they want you to click on to realize it is fake.  Sadly, a significant portion of the population are unable, unwilling, or never trained/taught to do that... enough that even one in a million people sapped is worth the millions of scam Emails going out every day.

[Boomer]

Funnily enough the crazy fonts and mis-spellings are deliberate.
The people that are easiest to scam are those who don't notice these "flags" that to the rest of us seem so obvious.
If we all replied to each and every scam email, the scammers couldn't cope with the volume of email and would never find that 1/100,000 gullible person who will actually send them money.

Perhaps that should be what these email filters do instead of putting the email in your Junk folder. Once they detect a flagged scam email, reply to it just once with an email containing random words. If every email system did that they'd be swamped.
Nah, the scamscum would just learn to filter that out.

Education is the only real fix. Teach people to recognise scams and to understand the adage "If it looks too good to be true, it's almost certainly a scam!"

[maxtog]

Nah, the scamscum would just learn to filter that out.

Yep.  Spammers utilize lots of technology on their side, also, which will filter and narrow down to the actual "targets" quite effectively.  Replying to spam usually results in just being put on more lists and getting yet more spam.  Personally, I report each  to:

https://spamcop.net

Less effective than some might think, yet more useful than others believe.  It does help some, and it feels like revenge (and that is the important part).

Education is the only real fix.

Indeed.  As an Email admin, I can't express just how astonishing bad the spam to "ham" (good Email) ratio really has become.

[Conrad]

Evidently I have better scammer protection as I don't see any of those idiotic requests getting through on my gmail account or work account.


Phone scamming on the other hand I do get...  I'm still waiting on the IRS to show up at my door.....even made cookies.

At some point I'll be eligible for a monthly payment from Social Security. But with the number of times that I've bee told that my social security number has been suspended, I may not get a dime.  lol

I'm still waiting for the knock on the door from LEO to arrest me for all of the fraudulent activity associated with my SSN.   

[VirginiaJim]

Yep, you and me both.. 

[Strawboss]

Luckily for me, I have not gotten any serious emailings that are suspicious, only emails from people in my contacts make it to my in box. Once a week I look at my junk mails, a few things, but again I rarely buy anything online or really do anything online except a few emails and this forum at work. I also don't open any forwards or any attachments at all from anybody. And, I only have basic filters and protection from my Macafee subscription.