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Nigerian Spam Restitution Latest Scam Attempt
David Utter
Staff Writer
2008-01-14
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Members of Nigerian royalty seeking help expatriating money are so five years ago. The newest scheme offer people reimbursement for their losses to 419 scams.
The legend of the 419 scam may have reached a point of critical mass. It has been discussed so much that people could be recognizing this grifting when it shows up in their inboxes and are ignoring it.
Security vendor Symantec said in its State of Spam report for December 2007 that something new showed up with the usual assortment of holiday-related junk clogging up email. A restitution offer promised to reimburse people victimized by 419 scams.
Naturally these restitution scams offer the same likelihood of payment as do the original frauds: zero.
"The scam states that payments will be supervised by UN officials and about 150 scam victims will be paid compensation of $100,000 each," Symantec said of the spam. "It provides some URL links as a reference to money that was successfully recovered by 419 scam victims."
"At the bottom of the email, it explains how the money may be recovered and the fraudulent background of such emails may be observed."
In keeping with the times, spam based on the ongoing Presidential primary campaigns has been spotted. These purport to give a reward, like a $500 gift card, in exchange for their opinion on Hillary Clinton's electability.
However, the destination for these sites collects personal information, with no reward provided for doing so.
View All Articles by David Utter
About the Author:
David Utter is a business and technology writer for SecurityProNews and WebProNews.
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