Has someone offered you a huge sum of money or a valuable consignment? It's a 419 or advance fee fraud - find out how they work, and what to do to be safe.
#15504 by mixer Tue Oct 27, 2009 5:05 pm
I received an e-mail today telling me that I have been named the recipient of a grant-donation of $850,000. USD which I have no intention of returning a reply. That said, however, I am concerned that some computers at a major university have been compromized and are being used as a botnet. Unfortunatly I am not computer savvy enough to include the header along with the body of the message. I did check out the address using tools that I have learned from this web-site as well as 419 and learned that it originated from a site at the University of Ohio. Can you give me some advise as to how to proceed from here?
Ron
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#15513 by Peta Tue Oct 27, 2009 10:40 pm
Hi mixer, This actually happens quite frequently. The chances are that the email address used to send the scam to you has been phished (hacked) and the account holder may have no knowledge of it. I suggest that you forward the scam email to the university IT department and advise them that the account may be being used for fraudulent purposes.
#15514 by mixer Wed Oct 28, 2009 12:47 am
Thank you Peta. I have now started trying to get to the right people.
Ron
#15525 by Ralph Wed Oct 28, 2009 5:23 am
This is something I see quite a lot, it is not at all uncommon for a scam email to appear to come from a university.

In every case I recall, the receiver has been asked to contact the scammer using a different email address to the one teh email appeared to have come from, this suggests to me that the scammer does not actually have access to the email address that the email appears to have come from.

Scammers keep getting smarter and manipulating IP addresses and having these emails appear to come from somewhere else it happening much more often

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