420,000 Scam E-mails Sent Every Hour In UK Alone 71
An anonymous reader writes "More than 420,000 scam e-mails are sent every hour in the UK, according to a report by CPP, which estimates that Brits were targeted by 3.7 billion phishing e-mails in the last 12 months alone. A quarter of us admit to falling victim to e-fraudsters, with the average victim losing over GBP285. Fake banking e-mails are the most common method used by criminals, with 55% of those targeted receiving seemingly legitimate e-correspondence from high street banks."
Re:Those Numbers Are Suspect (Score:1, Interesting)
For only £29.95 I'll mail you my *FREE* pamphlet "Great British E-Mail Scam of the Elizabethan Age and How to Profit By Them in This Age of Innocence". -Jonathan Swift, Managing Director, Barclays Bank PLC.
I almost got scammed once (Score:2, Interesting)
Stop phishing scams! Don't be gullible.
Re:I wonder... (Score:3, Interesting)
how long until the general public has caught on to the point where Spam is no longer profitable
You're assuming the scammers and the emailers are one and the same.
Much more likely you have the scammers fronting some money to the emailers. As long as theres one scammer out there with a hairbrained business plan, the emailers will be hired and put to work.
Don't know if the UK situation is similar to the US situation, but in the US its almost a stereotype that some percentage of people whom take out home equity lines of credit set up a retail store, despite the complete lack of experience, selling stuff like "pirate products", "decorative candles", cupcakes, small restaurants, etc. Then six months later when the seed cash is gone they fold and file personal bankruptcy.
Interestingly, the local cops thought it so unusual that the local candle store was still open for business after about three years, that they investigated it, and it seems the candle store was selling weed on the side, Busted!
Re:Blame the bank, not the user (Score:3, Interesting)
Why? Because I have a card reader that provides an encrypted string after I provide it with my chipped card, PIN and a string from the website. I need to do this for every new transaction. I still believe that only the greedy get scammed.
Unfortunately you might need to re-sync [nationwide.co.uk] it to gain the full security benefits.
Seriously there is one thing that is terribly wrong with these card readers. They are a gift to muggers. They can be used to verify the pin for a credit or debit card - even ones from other issuers. They don't even have to risk marching you to a cashpoint and forcing you to withdraw money, they can do it all from the comfort of their own crack-house. I complained to the bank and they pointed out that a card would be locked out after three wrong attempts. After two broken fingers I think most people would think twice before using this feature.
Re:I wonder... (Score:4, Interesting)
Not spam, phishing.
I used to receive barely literate mail shots, with my bank's domain in the "From:" field. Tracking back the IP revealed that the sender was a 3rd party with a domain registered to a caravan (trailer) park.
When I reported this to my bank as either a phishing attempt, or breathtakingly bad practice on their part, I got a snotty reply saying that this was a genuine mailshot via a 3rd party, and that this (by which they implicitly meant "faking headers") was standard practice. They genuinely could not understand why I had a problem with them sending out exactly the sort of faked email that they were regularly warning me about.
Needless to say, I changed banks shorty afterwards, but the lesson is that the line between legit and fraudulent is thin and wiggly.
Re:I wonder... (Score:3, Interesting)
> People who I've witnessed who got suckered:
Young people. They have this attitude that they can safely put all sorts of private and embarrassing stuff up on FaceSpace because they are "streetsmart" and know how to twiddle the privacy settings so that only their "friends" can see it.
Educated people. These are also the people who paid $40,000 for a car with an electric transmission because it was "green" and Japanese rather than a $10,000 Chevy that got better mileage. They also got sucked into the "fair trade" scam.