Wow. I find the constant “evolving” methods used by scammers to extract money out people a continued source of major LOLs.
The most recent Style of 419/email scam i’ve encountered is this beauty, from mr.swart.johan@outlook.com (nice to see Microsoft are still providing these knobheads with email addresses to use, first Hotmail and now Outlook.com – when will you clamp down, MS?)
Anyway, it appeared like this – all official lookin’ heh;
And the attachment was quite clearly a word document (no threat on its own) so i opened it;
It definitely looks authentic, don’t you think? 😛
Its a sad state of affairs when such a badly designed POS like this can actually scam money out of people – but the fact is it WILL!
If you get anything through on your email like this, first remember
“If its too good to be true THEN IT PROBABLY IS”
Secondly, remember branding guidelines – no multi million/billion dollar empire would allow their main logo to be SQUASHED like at the top of this document! Also Yahoo’s logo changed from that about a year ago!
I know all these things because I’m in this industry, i keep up to date with changing branding and stuff as its an interest of mine, and also i have a tiny degree of common sense that looks at something like this and, without question, files it under B.
If you are unsure or would like something looking into then please contact me either through here or through work and the team and I will happily advise and assist you in being able to spot these scam and how to officially report them.