Quote:
Originally Posted by cabmando
Wanna talk interesting scam? A friend sold a machine to a person in NY. He sends his wire instructions to the buyer. The buyer receives another email appearing to be from my friend with new wire instructions. Buyer sends money to new wire instructions without calling my friend to confirm. Buyer is now out money. How did they know about the wire instructions my friend sent?
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I don't fully understand the details, but this scam is well known in financial and legal circles. Our professional liability carrier has advised all lawyers to not send any payment information by email at all and to only operate by fax (faxes are too low tech for the contents to get compromised) and to follow up with an in-person or phone confirmation.
There is a way for scammers to get access to your Outlook account and plant a program there. Outlook is less secure than the rest of your system and a scan won't reveal anything because virus scans only look at the operating system. I don't recall how it is that they attach the program to your email. Anyway, the program allows them to see and send emails as though they were on your computer. The scammers target people who are likely to exchange money - finance and legal professionals, real estate agents, title companies, etc. When they see a transaction they swoop in and tell the buyer to send the money somewhere else and it looks like the message is from the seller.
Over Christmas I changed my Amazon account to deliver some packages to my mother in law's house because she was there to receive them and the packages would have sat on my door step for a while. Within an hour I received an email from "Amazon" saying I needed to log back in to confirm my change in shipping location and to use the conveniently provided link.