Email Scams

Email Scams

Day 2 is pretty exciting for me guys as this happened to someone in my community. As many times as the general public is warned about email scams, someone always falls for that too good to be true email scam. Why in the world would someone suddenly, out of nowhere, want to send you $12.5 Million, especially some random Nigerian prince that knows nothing of you. I say $12.5 Million because that's the amount in the email that the FBI says my bank contacted me about. Guess what? I never got contacted about $12.5 Million from my bank. I'll type out the second paragraph so you can see how ridiculous it sounds from an outside perspective. 

"So, we the federal bureau of investigation (FBI), [this is already sounding hysterical. The FBI would never contact a random individual about their money. They have too much stuff to do.] in conjunction with the United Nations (UN) [they changed syntax right there and decided the UN was more important than the FBI and capitalized it] financial department have investigated through our monitoring network regarding your payment of $12.5 million, You have the legitimate right to complete [I'm going to be the grammar police here for a second.  If this was an official email they would have at least got their grammar right.] your transaction to claim your fund US$12.5,000,000.00 [They didn't space between US and the dollar sign and they also put a decimal instead of comma. That tells me they are outside of the US].

The brackets I put are the tell-tales of an email scam. Improper grammar, a very busy organization contacting a random individual about money they were never contacted about in the first place, and also when someone contacts you first; that is the first and most important sign of a scam. I want to talk about what happened to the individual in my community. She was home one day and she gets a phone call that claims they are from Microsoft saying that something is wrong with her computer. Now, already sign number one. Contacted her first. Sign number two is there as well. Microsoft DOES NOT monitor your computer for you and will never in a million years contact you about it. Back to the story. The scam artists told her they need access to her computer. Pause here real quick. Unless you personally call someone and ask for help, never give anyone remote access to your computer. The story ends here anyways as the scammers ended up stealing everything from this person. Her money, her privacy, her passwords. From there they could have locked her out of the device they never touched. As far as I know, she didn't get her property back. She lost everything in just a few minutes. My last piece of advice to avoid this is if someone ever tells you that you have to pay them for a job or, for the sake of this post, send you money, then just end the call, delete the email, or leave the location. It's scam.

Every time I see a news report of someone falling for this I laugh. Don't take it the wrong way, I feel horrible for them getting scammed. It's terrible that someone feels they have to steal everything from someone. It's just so easy to tell whether or not it's a scam. If you need help refer to the brackets I put about the email I received just today. Grammar, contact you first, contact you telling you that you did something or other and you never did, and bad spelling and grammar. Top signs right there. Avoid these and you'll be fine.

This was a heavy topic I know. I decided to write about it because it happens way too often for my sanity. If you have a question and want me to write about it, put it in the comments or email me at cbitcomputersolutions@gmail.com and I will do my best to answer your questions through the blog. I'm going to write something on here every day. Thank you so much for taking the time to read this and I hope you have a wonderful day.