My blog subject of choice is scams, and more often than not – online scams. My friends know I have an interest in this and they often send potentials to me via email. A few of them have asked me “Why do people do this anyway? I mean, surely no one falls for it?”…
Well i’m afraid to say they do, and before you condemn these people for being stupid, you first need to realise the sheer size of the problem;
According to Commtouch’s Internet Threats Trend Report for the first quarter of 2013, an average of 97.4 billion spam e-mails and 973 million malware e-mails were sent worldwide each day in Q1 2013 (h/t Softpedia)
That is nearly 100 BILLION spam emails sent every day in the first half of 2013! Thats 37 daily spam emails for every active internet user at the time!
The number of active internet users grew by 200 million in 2014 from 2.7 billion to 2.9 billion, and that will probably be more like 3.3 billion now so I dread to think how much more spam is being sent out – and scam emails make up a huge percentage of all these unwanted messages.
Suddenly a handful of people falling victim to these tricksters every now and then doesnt seem so ridiculous.
Its up to the savvy ones amongst us to ensure our family and friends don’t end being ripped off or scammed, so make sure you educate the people you care about and show them what these things look like so if one slips the net they can spot it and delete it!
And always remember, If it looks too good to be true, or if something just doesn’t look right – mark as spam (or ‘phishing’) or DELETE!
NO ONE is going to give you $50,000,000,000 over a completely unsolicited and unexpected email.