Johannesburg, 28 Jul 2005
When was the last time you received one of these in your email?
"ATTENTION:DEAR SIR/MADAM,
STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL
I know that you will be surprised to receive this message. please consider this message as a request from a family in dire need of help. I am MR SAKAR MOHAMED from LIBERIA, the son of Brigadier OSAOMO MOHAMED.I got your contact through the Senegal Information exchange {S.I.E} regarding your trustworthiness. My purpose of contacting you is to help me out of my difficult condition in view of my Father death.I need your assistance to help me to transfer some money out of SENEGAL into your personal or company`s account.The amount involved is {US$7.000,000} SEVEN MILLION UNITED STATES DOLLARS."
Known internationally as 419s (after the relevant section of the Criminal Code of Nigeria), or "Advance Fee Fraud", these scam letters are not only still arriving in personal email inboxes but are still catching unsuspecting victims with the lure of easy money. Even the Nigerians themselves refer to them as plain old 419s.
As of 1996, and thus much more now, the scammed sums were estimated at five billion US$. Started as a faxed scam in the 1980s, the scamsters are using every technology available to them. There`s not a lot one can do about these scams, except to hope your email anti-spam software eliminates as many of them as possible, your firewalls have been set up properly and you know about the current scams. When it comes to identity theft (phishing), the costs are even higher with an estimated 9.3 million American adults as victims of identity fraud during the past 12 months and the total U.S. annual identity fraud cost at $56.2 billion.
Brett Salovy, manager of Security Solutions at Internet Solutions, leading converged communications service provider, says one can`t be too careful when asked for any personal details by email.
"The more we hear about these attempts at fraud and the accompanying scams, the more we wonder why people are so gullible."
However, as more and more new users of the Internet and email come aboard, the more the warnings have to be repeated. There are many websites dedicated to exposing and giving warning about scams. From the relatively harmless (send a card to a dying child) to the ones harmful to business (Bill Gates will send you an X-Box or a case of champagne), to the ones designed specifically to steal identities and credit card information (phishing), if you suspect the slightest hint of a scam, or even if you don`t, check it out. Urban legends are easily verified at www.snopes.com.
"It`s a fine line between free exchange of everything and anything, and firewall software that is so rigid you can`t receive attachments or your boss` memos bounce back at him," says Salovy. "In the security arena, individual company requirements (as opposed to the IT department`s wishes) have to be set up so that while operations are not disrupted, business critical data is secure. Many individual users simply do not understand that anything on a company PC, laptop, server and PDA belongs to the company - whether sent to you privately or not. When employees use the company hardware, networks and infrastructure to send emails, they are subject to the company`s scrutiny at any time. The Internet is still perceived as being "free-to-air" and thus available to anyone - and that`s true if it`s your own private computer being used from a home Internet connection."
In addition, he says, no one today would even think of receiving email or using the Internet without having some type of anti-virus software to protect their machine. Spam, spyware, adware, email scams, phishing and viruses - if you are a corporate user then thankfully you are well protected through your service provider or central IT facility. Salovy cautions users to keep their software updated and to regularly check for all of the above intrusive agents.
The following websites are excellent sources of information:
http://419legal.org/
http://www.phishinginfo.org/
http://www.antiphishing.org/
http://www.netscalped.com/news.html
http://www.saps.gov.za/default.htm
Share