Email Scams - 8 News NOW

Email Scams

How many emails do you think you get a day?

I get A LOT. Sadly, I'd say more than half are unsolicited emails too. Lots of them are offering products, some tell me about sales and there are always a handful of obvious scams. I get an email almost daily from someone in Nigeria who wants to share of millions of dollars with me. I also get emails from long lost friends overseas who desperately need my help asking me to wire them money.

Those are the old, obvious email scam though. A lot of the new ones have gotten a lot more sophisticated and can be hard to identify.

Take this email viewer Sydney Knot got recently.

-----Original Message-----

From: COX.NET [mail to:lenedlahey@cox.net]

Sent: Thursday, June 21, 2012 8:55 PM

Subject: UPGRADE YOUR ACCOUNT!

Importance: Low

This message is from WEBMAIL.COX.NET messaging center to all our COX.NET email account owners and users. This is to inform you that we are currently upgrading our system/data base and e-mail account center users, we are currently deleting all unused COX.NET email accounts to create more space for new accounts. To complete your WEBMAIL.COX.NET webmail account, you must reply to this email and entering your username and password in the field below so that we will know that it's a presently used account to prevent your account from being closed or deleted:

Username: ......... ....

Password..........

Re-enter Password:.....

Territory: ..................

It looks pretty convincing but it is a fake.

So what should you do if you get an email like this? Report it!

Juergen Barbusca with Cox told me to report fraudulent communications such as these, contact phishingreport@cox.net or Abuse@cox.net.

Also let me know about any scams you hear about. We'll talk about it in an 8 On Your Side segment and get the word out!

You can always email or call me.

8onyourside@8newsnow.com or 702-765-8215