Phishing - What Is It And Why Is It So Devastating?

Phishing (and yes, is spelt correctly) is the art of scammers sending out tens of millions of emails in the hope that some recipients accidentally fall victim for the scam. According to research about five people per million emails fall for them.

Usually the scam email is purportedly from your bank (for this article I'll use the word 'bank' but it could easily be any financial institute) to say that they have updated their system (or another reason) so you need to make sure that your details are correct, and if you will simply click on the link in the email then you will be able to enter your account details.

The trick here is that the link in the email does not take you to your banks web site, it is actually a CLONE website run by the scammers and if you enter your bank details they are then sent given to the scammers. They will then in turn go to the REAL web site of your bank and use your details (that you just gave them) to access your funds, once in your account it's a simple job of transferring all your funds into another account.

The question I get asked the most after explaining all this is why can't the money be traced? Why can't the authorities simply reverse the financial transaction on behalf of the victim?
The answer is a bit complicated but I will try to explain it here, but before I do I must explain another scam - I call it the 'work from home' scam.

The 'work from home' scam is simple - you receive an email that offers you a part time job at home for transferring funds. The email may state that the writer cannot accept payments from your country (but they never actually specify which country that is) in order to pay for their services (they may sell paintings, antique furniture e.t.c). So they have decided that YOU would be the perfect person to help them by accepting payments in your country and then sending the money onto them (after you take out 10% as commission). You are to send the money overseas via wire transfer - the reason for this (and it isn't specified in the email) is the money will no longer be traceable!

Now lets put those two scams together and you'll see the overall picture.

I'll explain this using an example -
The scammer (I'll base him in Nigeria) sends out one million emails purporting to be for 'Bank of Australia' (BoA) to random email addresses. From that maybe one person falls victim to the scam (remember that out of a million people who receive the email maybe fifty actually have an account with BoA) and enters their bank account details.
The bank account details are then sent to the scammer who transfers the money into another account. Most bank accounts in Australia cannot send money overseas, in this case Nigeria, so the money must be transferred to another Australian bank account (any Australian bank account). And whose account is it sent to? The person who has accepted the 'work from home' job that's who!

The person who has accepted the 'work from home' job now receives the money to which they believe is part of a legitimate business transaction. All they need to do now is to withdraw 90% of the money (they get to keep 10%) and send it, via wire transfer, to Nigeria. Once the wire transfer has gone through there is now no way of getting the money back

So what's happened here? The more common word for this is 'money laundering'.
The person who has their bank account looted has been finished with (as the scammer knows that the person won't be blindly putting money back into the account so they can get it again), but the person who has fallen for the 'work from home' scam is about to get into a lot of trouble as they have laundered money for a criminal organization, and that can land people in jail.

So how do you protect yourself from these scams?
Two rules. Firstly, NEVER click on a link in an email - EVER. Secondly, remember the old saying 'there is no such thing as a free lunch' and you won't get sucked in to the 'work from home' scam.

Copyright 2007

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