Email scam warning

I'm sure we're not that daft, but I'll stick it on here anyway.

Coke warns web users not to get fizzed by email scam
29 September 2006

Coca-Cola is warning people not to be sucked in by an email scam which tells them they have won hundreds of British pounds in a random Coca-Cola lottery.

The email uses sophisticated coke logos and official language in its messages, which ask for personal details for "claims processing".

Coca-Cola NZ corporate affairs manager Alison Sykora said the email had nothing to do with Coca-Cola, which recommended people ignore it.

It directs correspondence to a Yahoo account, claiming to belong to a "promotion fudiciary agent".

Ms Sykora said there were several versions circulating of the scam, known as "phishing" where fraudsters try to build a relationship with victims to obtain their bank details.

"Overall, if it looks too good to be true, it probably is," she said.

The latest attempt follows a phishing attack on Trade Me online auctionhouse in August, where 150 customers were duped into giving out their account details, and a similar scam at New Zealand banks in June.

Is anyone being bombarded with spam emails from unknow people suggesting you buy shares in unknown companies ? The emails always take the same format i.e. listing the Trade Date, Company Stock, Category, Region, Current Price, 1 week target, Recommendations and Expectations.

The email subject bears no relationship to the content of the email i.e. half sister, painfully and rhythmic. The top section of the email cannot be copied into a word document and uses several colours in the text, while the bottom part is in standard email text format and can be copied.

In every case the author's name consists of a first name and surname ( Doris Bradford, Jack Needy and Joan Gibbs to name but 3) These emails always seem to arrive in batches.

Has anyone else received similar and do you thing there is anything sinister in them ?


Dave & Pam

Hi Dave,

Although I'm not in NZ, I'm having this sort of thing at the moment into my Yahoo mailbox. ?I never open the emails as it's recommended that you doesn't if you don't recognise the sender's name because it alerts the sender that it's a 'live' email address and encourages even more spam to arrive. ?Unfortunately every now and then the subject of the email closely resembles something that's going on in my life at that time and it's a real dilema whether to open it or now. ?The trickery infuriates me as it is purely geared to lure you into a site you'd rather not go into. ?Some of mine are porn sites, which is quite upsetting as I'm never sure what I've clicked on to bring forth these unwanted offerings, but I also get sites that are selling stuff like medicines. ?

These emails do come in batches and then it goes quiet for a while. ?They also show people's names as the author. ?I don't know where they come from or what their content is as I try not to open them so there could be all sorts in there. ?The usual reason for spam arriving is that you've clicked on a site that is somehow linked to the spammers e.g. some sites sell or pass on people's email addresses. Just having your email address anywhere on the Internet is enough to start off the spamming. They have 'crawlers' that scour the Net looking for addresses.

It's a real pain and I wish they'd find a way to combat it. ?

I get heaps of those share price email things every day. Most of the ones I get are directed to email accounts used to register domain names, which spammers can retrieve from checking the domain register.

Trick to avoid SPAM:

Always have 3 email accounts -

1. Private account which only friends/family have. This can normally be your ISP account. DONT give this to friends/family who send those chain mail letters around (you know the ones, pass this on to 10 people in 10 minutes and the love of your life will phone you kinda rubbish). If you notice, 6000 other peoples email addresses are listed in the body of the message from where it's been sent around, and yours will be as it gets sent on, so it only takes one person with a virus on their PC unwittingly give away all those addresses to a spammer.

2. A trusted web account which you use for signing up to trusted accounts such as internet banking, or the like. It's rare to receive junk mail to these addresses, but you can receive a lot of marketing junk so it keeps it seperate from your private emails.

3. SPAM account, for signing up to untrusted websites, or displaying on the internet. A random Hotmail account is good for this kind of thing, as it's good with filtering out junk.

Although this doesn't really solve the SPAM issue, it at least means your personal inbox isn't invaded by unwanted scams all the time.

1. Private account which only friends/family have. ?This can normally be your ISP account. DONT give this to friends/family who send those chain mail letters around (you know the ones, pass this on to 10 people in 10 minutes and the love of your life will phone you kinda rubbish).

Now who could you possibly know who does that? [smiley=eusa_whistle.gif] [smiley=Blush.gif]

;D Was just thinking the same thing. Very brave of him to post those sentiments (or should that read 'reckless'?)? :D

Explosion in junk emails overloads service providers
Tuesday October 31, 2006
By Kiran Chug

Junk email has been causing havoc for internet users and service providers since Saturday, with around 37,500 ihug customers experiencing the most serious delays.

Ihug spokeswoman Cherie Lacey said up to half of the company's 75,000 customers were experiencing 24-hour delays in receiving their emails. But the ISP's email service has been choked over the past few days due to "a massive outbreak in viruses and spam".

Ms Lacey said the junk emails disguised as images managed to bypass the ihug filter. As a result, ihug became overloaded and emails sent to customers over the weekend took an extra day.

The company installed new software to combat the problem and hoped the delays would be resolved within a couple of days. "It is a constant struggle to keep out spam, there are little wars going on out there in cyberspace to keep it out."

Ms Lacey said once the email backlog was cleared, ihug would be installing new hardware to combat the ongoing problem of junk email and viruses.

About 2000 business customers were affected.

One ihug business customer, who works from his home, said he was unable to deliver a presentation in Auckland yesterday because he had not received the email containing the material he needed. The Mt Albert graphic designer, who did not want to be named, had no idea how much the delay would cost in lost business.

He did not know how many emails were due to arrive, making it difficult to guess how much business he had lost. ihug had not indicated when the problem would be fixed. Internet service provider Maxnet's customers also suffered delays in receiving emails.

Helpdesk manager Jay Best said the company had experienced a 40 per cent increase in spam within the past month. Again, junk emails disguised as images had bypassed his company's filtering systems.

Mr Best said Maxnet customers encountered delays of up to two hours and the company had installed new software to recognise the junk emails and get rid of them. "In one extreme case we had a customer who received 80,000 junk emails last month."