Same happened to a friend of mine Brian...she was staying in an hotel in Spain...not very used to computers and used the one in reception and didnt log out....all her contacts, including me, recieved emails stating she was stuck in spain, stranded with no money having been robbed...and to please send funds as they were being prevented from leaving the hotel till they paid the bill! poor Anne nearly died a death when she returned to the UK...more so when she realised three friends, all elderly had fallen for the scam and sent funds to the address given....
Julia, many thanks for the warning and for setting out the contents of the email. The English ones I can usually suss quite quickly but, due both to my inadequate French and my still trying to get to grips with the plethora of organisations we have to deal with, I could well have fallen foul here. Thank you.
I am in the same situation, Brian. Lots of international business. I could hang it all up and fully retire if only I would send Mr Obuto, in Nigeria, my bank account and routing info so he can get his family's immense wealth out of the country. He's going to split it with me;-)
I had one saying I was stranded in Spain last year, please send money, from my address whilst I was actually in hospital in a bad state. In fact James was one of the people who picked up on it (rely on SFN seriously) and called to speak to my wife and offer advice. I was simply phished and my email used, so changed when I was back out of hospital.
I have up to 200 spams a day, I delete them. For all of that plenty of stuff gets through that I send to spam. Viruses only get in if files are opened but worse are the spyware and such things that make phishing possible. The scams are becoming so transparent I am surprised the same ones recycle as often as they do and why the scammers still bother. The hacking and phishing and use of all forms of spyware is tedious. I need contacts worldwide and several languages for what I do so I am extra, extra careful. It is what we all need to be. Sad isn't it?
There are the scams and the come-ons for a virus infection. These usually come as some sort of notification that a private carrier or La Poste has a package being held for you. The emails look very convincing with company logos. You are instructed to download the file of the particulars which will infect your computer with all sorts of nastiness and possibly allow the hacker to acquire passwords to your financial sites. The rule of thumb, as advised previously, is never click a link or download a file without first performing some due diligence directly with the alleged sending company. I even received a dire request from a friend who claimed to have been mugged while in Barcelona with his family and needed immediate funds Western Union sent to him to pay his hotel bill and get his family back home, as his cell phone and wallet/credit cards had been stolen. I was aware that the friend in question was speaking at a conference in Vancouver at the time. The hackers had hacked his personal email address and sent the distress mail to everyone in his email address book. So, even if the message is from a good friend and comes from his email server, ask some personal questions that you know would not be known to the hacker, but the friend could answer correctly. Its a jungle out there. My spam folder runneth over.
They slightly tweak addresses occasionally and avoid going directly into spam. Caisse d'Allocations Familiales do not email anything that is 'personal', therefore I would hope it is quite transparent. However, unbelievably, it appears that some of the people who send out those 'you have just inherited 20 billion US$ assets in an oil well, please send $200 to clear your payment...' make a lot of money!
The warning is fine and taken in that spirit by all and sundry no doubt, but I suspect most people are quite blasé and ignore them and a tiny little handful fall right in it. Most of them will probably not have paid any notice to your warning. Fickle species, we human beings.
I know that most people are aware of the bank scams, and they're really obvious if you don't actually bank with the bank the email is supposedly from. But maybe some people are with CAF and might think this one is genuine. Hence the warning. Any bank ones go to my spam box automatically, but this one didn't.
Plus a new one today: ECOBANK INTL PLC 'Compensations payments', beside my two quite regular NatWest ones about account management and my credit card, neither of which I have ever had... then something telling me about my 'credit score'. How they do not go directly to spam is beyond me, given that I put them in the spam box regularly and empty it daily.
They are ubiquitous. I get them from Santander, Coop, NatWest, Crédit Agricole, ABN Amro, Dresdener and others regularly. They just go in my spam. Simple rule, if you are told you have a rebate, your aunt seven times removed has left you two million Euros or whatever, spam it. If it appears to be your own bank but looks wrong, ask them before opening it or doing anything else.