How did those scammers know my email?
I just received a email, a personal message with a story about her, with so much money and said she want to share it but wanted to come to America. I read it and did kinda felt bad and almost wanted to help her, but I know it's fake, i mean how can you possibly know my email? and the email is this: ( I just wanted to know how can they possibly know this? as I never gave out my email, other than my friends.) (please don't get attracted to that email, it's a scam, 100% sure) FROM CELINA TOMA. Dear Beloved, I REQUEST YOU TO BE MY GUARDIAN AND THEN HELP ME TO COME OVER YOUR COUNTRY: Good day and how are you today? I hope fine? After going through your profile, permit me to inform you of my desire of asking you to be a guardian or foster parent to me and then help me out in what I am about to tell you. I know this may sound strange to you, receiving a mail from an unknown person, but my condition has forced me to do that. I'm Ms.Celina Toma 21 years old, the only daughter of Late Mr. & Mrs. Joel Toma my father was a very wealthy cocoa merchant here in Abidjan, the economic capital of Cote d'Ivoire. He was poisoned to death by his business associates on one of their outings on a business trip in France, my mother died when I was a baby. Before the death of my father on 12th February 2008 in a private hospital here in Abidjan, he secretly called me by his bed side and told me that he has the sum of six million Five hundred thousand United State Dollars USD ($6.5million) he deposited in a private security company there in Jakarta-Indonesia, which the security company Diplomat will delivery it to you or you travel to Jakarta and claim it in person, because of the legal valuables. He then strongly advised me not to seek for assistance in the investment of the money from his lawyer or any of his friends here but to seek for a foreign partner from a country of my choice (outside our country, Cote d Ivoire) that will assist me in the wise investment of the money. I have since left the money in the security custody with the view of my making use of it for investment purposes after my education carrier. But as you may be already aware by now, our country (Cote D' Ivoire) is presently at political crises. Rebels have already taken over the whole Northern part of the country and making efforts towards to capture the commercial center of the country, Abidjan, where I am now. I want an investment purpose like real estate management or hotel management. Because of this I am honorably seeking your assistance in the following ways: (1) To serve as a guardian to me and then assist me receiving the money into your care. (2) To make arrangement for me to come over to your country to further my education and then settle there permanently. If you accept to stand as my guardian or foster parent to me, I need not discuss on any percentage with you as you have to see the whole money as yours and then assist me invest it. But if you still want a percentage, I am willing to offer you, 30 % of the total money as compensation for your assistance. Please tell me if you feel the percentage I offered is not ok by you. As soon as I receive your concrete assurance to assist me with my proposal and also your full contact address/phone number and pictures, I will give you the security company contact to reach MR.KENNEDY MURRY and know their legal procedures to release and deliver it to you as I want to come over to stay with you permanently please. You shall then be giving me information on when the transaction will be over. I shall also send my pictures to you. No matter what your decision may turn out to be, please I beg you to keep this highly secret for my safety, as I believe that those people that killed my Daddy are still after me here. For more explanations regarding my situation here. Thanks and God bless you. Best regards. Miss Celina Toma. thanks guys, I know all those tricks, I haven't really got scammed yet. I mean it's just quite obvious, and I just read a funny article about the scammer getting scammed. I tracked this one, and it did came from the exact country. good thing I copy and past a sentence from it and search it on google, and then found out it's been a repeated scam since almost 3 years ago......
Security - 4 Answers
Random Answers, Critics, Comments, Opinions :
1 :
This is a scam, Every one gets these things. One time I tracked down the sender of one of these messages who claimed to be in china, But the person was actually in Europe. Most of the time these people will just rip you off they will take your money and run or steal your identity. I suggest you add the email address of this person to your blacklist so you do not receive any more of these things.
2 :
What normally happens is you as the user leave your email lying about on places such as facebook etc... or if you don't leave your email lying about(like I don't), then the likelihood is that someone sells your email username for less than 1p-or by chain mail The most common method is probably by chain messages. I could send you and a bunch of friends some messages. Say I have 250 friends in my email account, and I forget to use BCC, it means that 249 other people can see your email address. Say then that out of the 250 people I forward the chain message to, 175 reforward the message(with every one's emails) Eventually, these emails reach a scammer. So, to recap, scammes get your email addresses by paying about £10/1000 emails or something daft like that, or by chain messages
3 :
play with them, especially the nigerian scammers, tell them you want to go to nigeria, and visit the eiffel tower, the prymaids, the great wall of poland mount everest the alps etc, etc, and the scammers will stop
4 :
They know your email because you have posted it somewhere, you signed up for some website/mailing list who sold your details, or a computer program just randomly sent out spam to every conceivable combination of letters and numbers and when you opened the message they got a return receipt that your account was active and you were added to a spam list. That's why you NEVER open emails from anyone you don't know. Each time you open spam, you send a receipt back to the sender that your account is active - meaning you will get even more spam
