Have you ever seen this email scam??

[npmommie]

I just checked my email.......there is one with the name of the sender ( a relative of mine ) and the subject My Flight.
I open the email and the return email is this relative's real email address.
the email reads a story of being stuck in london, needing cash, could I send money.
there is no link to click or anything else.
I just closed it back out.

I don't get this scam. the email appears to really come from my relative, who is not traveling.........I suppose if I hit reply somehow that is how they get me to wire money?

so have you ever seen this one?
how do they do that, send an email that really appears to come from someone you know??
I hope I don't get a virus just from opening the email!!

 

[AshleyW]

I just checked my email.......there is one with the name of the sender ( a relative of mine ) and the subject My Flight.
I open the email and the return email is this relative's real email address.
the email reads a story of being stuck in london, needing cash, could I send money.
there is no link to click or anything else.
I just closed it back out.

I don't get this scam. the email appears to really come from my relative, who is not traveling.........I suppose if I hit reply somehow that is how they get me to wire money?

so have you ever seen this one?
how do they do that, send an email that really appears to come from someone you know??
I hope I don't get a virus just from opening the email!!

That's not really a new scam. You should let your relative know they need to change their e-mail password. That's how it looks like it came from their e-mail address -- because it did, their account was hacked into.

What happens is you reply back, tell them you can send money and ask where to send it to. The scammer gives you an address or bank account or whatever, you send the money, and they get it.

As long as you didn't click any links or download anything, you shouldn't have a virus problem.

 

[npmommie]

That's not really a new scam. You should let your relative know they need to change their e-mail password. That's how it looks like it came from their e-mail address -- because it did, their account was hacked into.

What happens is you reply back, tell them you can send money and ask where to send it to. The scammer gives you an address or bank account or whatever, you send the money, and they get it.

As long as you didn't click any links or download anything, you shouldn't have a virus problem.

thanks for the info.
I called my relative to let them know.
boy these scammers are really getting sneaky.
I would hope anyone getting something like this would verify the person is really traveling before sending any money.
I knew right away since I knew this person was not out of the country. and if I didn't know, I would check.

 

[Jennasis]

Yes. It happened to my friend's husband. his account was hacked into and siezed and every contact was sent that same story about being stuck in London. Poor guy had a lot of mess to clean up.

 

[TDC Nala]

That's a relatively common scam. It's not all that hard for scammers to acquire someone's e-mail address and even information about people.

 

[npmommie]

I get emails all the time in my junk folder that appear to have come from myself
mostly advertising for viagra..........

 

[FireDancer]

I suspect if you look at the header details for the email the email didn't actually come from the name the is displayed. It is a pretty common spam trick to use the name of a known contact or your own personal email (and appending RE: to the subject) to try and trick you into opening the email or responding to it.

They are now using the names of friends from Facebook or other social sites to get the names without having to even get into the actual email account. It is a good idea to change the email password just in case of course.

It is also a good idea to use a different email then you do on any other site for your email. So many people use a common password and if they click a bad link in Facebook and that password is known to someone they can try to log into the attached email account with the same password or a slightly altered one (password2 instead of password1 for example).

 

[IDoDis]

Just because the email address appeared to come from your friend's email account, doesn't mean it did. It's a technique that spammers use called, "spoofing." I've gotten spam emails from myself before, but my account has not been hacked.

This article may help you understand it better than I can explain it:
http://ask-leo.com/why_am_i_getting_spam_from_myself.html

 

[KristaTX]

I actually got an e-mail from a "friend" yesterday just like that. That scam was new to me. There were signals to me that it wasn't from her (e.g. multiple run-on sentences, how could she e-mail me if she didn't have her phone? how could the hotel manager keep them hostage? wouldn't they have given the hotel a credit card at check-in?), but I still thought it was for real when I first read it. Plus my friend is on vacation somewhere, but I don't know where they went.

It seemed a lot more real than the ones I get from banks/fake websites or rich Africans, which I am never tricked by. This one had me going for a few minutes.

 

[TheBigBadWolf]

My DD got the same scam email, saying her cousin had been beaten and robbed while in London, please send money, etc. The problem was her cousin had been in London the week before, and DD thought the email was real and almost wired him money. Fortunately she thought to call his mom first, and found out DC was back in the states. DD said the scammer got their info from Facebook, and she'd been deleted from her DC's Facebook friends' list, along with all the other people on his friend's list who had received the same London scam email. I was thankful DD thought to check out the story first before wiring money. She's normally very gullible.

 

[willowsnn3]

I just checked my email.......there is one with the name of the sender ( a relative of mine ) and the subject My Flight.
I open the email and the return email is this relative's real email address.
the email reads a story of being stuck in london, needing cash, could I send money.
there is no link to click or anything else.
I just closed it back out.

I don't get this scam. the email appears to really come from my relative, who is not traveling.........I suppose if I hit reply somehow that is how they get me to wire money?

so have you ever seen this one?
how do they do that, send an email that really appears to come from someone you know??
I hope I don't get a virus just from opening the email!!

My daughter got the same email last week. Supposedly from our children's pastor @ our church. And this lady does travel a lot but we had just seen her on Sunday & there was no mention of her going to London. DD called Ms. Janet immediately to see what was going on & Ms. Janet told her that apparently her Facebook & her email had been hacked or something & everyone in her address book had gotten the same email & she was trying to call everyone to let them know it wasn't for real.

 

[elgerber]

This happened to my boss too, Memorial Day weekend. I knew it wasn't him, he would NEVER open an e-mail by stating I am writing this in tears LOL... They created a fake e-mail account that looked like his, and a couple of people did communicate back and forth with the person and got some more info from them, but I don't think they did anything with it (they kept it in case the authorities needed it)

 

[cc1013]

This is not only an e-mail scam, but also a phone scam. At the beginning of the year, someone called my elderly grandmother claiming to be my husband and said that we were in London and I had been injured in a car accident. She was obviously very upset with that news and kept asking to talk to me. When the caller wouldn't let her talk to me and repeatedly asked for her credit card to pay the bills, she realized something was up. Then she asked the caller to tell her when our birthdays are and he hung up. It's just frightening. I then got a panicked call at work asking if I was okay. I felt so bad for her but was thrilled that it dawned on her that the situation wasn't true.

 

[Silent1CB]

Same type of scam happens on Facebook Chat. Friend/relative stuck in London after wallet & passport stolen. Please wire money. Except on chat, you are talking live with the person trying to scam you.

 

[laurie31]

I got the exact same email this week! And it came from our youth pastor! I knew darn good and well he wasn't in London as I'd just dropped off DD at church for a youth activity and he was there! LOL

And as a PP said about theirs, he also would never start out with "I'm writing this in tears" and the rest didn't sound like him either. We soon got an email from his wife saying his account had been hacked and he had gotten a new email address.

I guess if these spammers get even a 1 in 10,000 response, then they can make some money. Too bad they can't spend the effort it took to do all that on actual honest work.