Friday, May 16, 2008

Beware Of Shipments To Singapore, Indonesia And Nigeria

There is an alert from our network security team. This online fraud is not new but seems to shown a strong revival in the past few months. You receive an email from a prospective 'buyer' requesting for payment mode clarification. The email would read more or less like the content shown below.....

I am xyz from Singapore (or Indonesia or Nigeria) and would like to buy some items from your website. But before I do this, I need to know if you accept Visa (or Mastercard or AMEX). Let me have this information and I will place the order.

Another fraud which is similar to this has the content as shown below:

I have seen your website and would like to buy 50 pieces of 22k Gold Chains payment will be through my AMEX card. I will need you to ship these chains to my retail stores in Nigeria.

The important thing about the the 22k Gold Chains mention is that, the cybercrook picks up the exact title of some merchandise that is listed on your website. The words are so similar that it is very likely that a cut and paste operation was used for the text.

Beware of these online frauds, stay away from such emails and delete them the moment they arrive. What is alarming is the text content, it has a surprising uniformity and has remained this way for many years now. There is every possibility that, one large group of fraudsters is behind this fraud. Many honest and budding online sellers have got financially ruined by falling for this internet fraud. The thought of being able to make a big sale brings about an excitement and not even a small degree of caution is felt.

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