It is difficult to determine the authenticity of the email or SMS but the best one can do is to check first before obliging to the request
KUALA LUMPUR: Irresponsible cyberspace imposters and hackers are becoming bolder and smarter.
We have seen and heard about their attempts to dupe Internet users to solicit money or acquire personal information such as bank account numbers and others.
Now, they have moved up another step, sending forged emails to users, portraying themselves as the users' "close friend", seeking financial assistance by giving reasons like they are in dire need for cash to settle debts such as house rentals or hotel bills.
One such case happened to this reporter's friend recently, who said that he was cheated by an unsuspected email, supposedly sent by his close friend.
The name of his close friend seems to be genuine and the email address of the sender appeared to be of his close friend. The said close friend was seeking ?1,000 (RM4,850) to settle the rental of an apartment in Aberdeen, Scotland. The email sender said he was short of cash to pay for the rental of the apartment that he was staying in temporarily while on a work assignment there.
Little did this friend of the reporter suspect that he was being duped into soliciting the cash. He was only aware of being duped when the sender asked for his bank account number after making the first transaction. Why would his close friend want to know his bank account number when it was not he who was having the financial problem?
It was not known whether this unscrupulous email sender managed to hack the email of the victim, but one thing for sure, the email sender had managed to convince him to send some cash to him.
It may not be a big amount but just imagine how much this imposter would have secured if he managed to cheat several more unsuspecting Internet users, using the same modus operandi.
And this reporter was probably a bit lucky, as he had received an email, purportedly from one of the executives of a company that he had interviewed earlier.
The executive was seeking a few hundred British pounds to settle his room bill at a hotel in London. He said his credit card had reached the limit and he had no cash to pay for the remaining bills.
In this case, it was hard for the reporter to decide whether to oblige to the request or just ignore it because he knew the executive, who had helped him in his news article before. The name was correct but the email address was questionable. So this reporter decided not to take the risk.
Come to think of it, this pretentious email sender could have gotten the reporter's email address from the newspaper and the name of the executive from the news article.
Another interesting scam that is common, is through the short message service (SMS), announcing that the owners of the mobile phones are the winners of a lucky draw by certain companies.
Although these have been highlighted in the media, there are bound to be people who fall prey to the scam. It is, perhaps, because of this, unscrupulous people continue to cheat on other people.
In one scam, a sender sent an SMS, identifying himself as "pakcik" and urgently asked the mobile phone owner to top-up another mobile phone. Well, "pakcik" is common when addressing an elderly man, and can be anybody's uncle.
So, one can easily make a mistake that the SMS from "pakcik" is from their uncle. But from what this reporter had gathered, usually these SMSes are sent from international numbers, starting with 685XXXXXXX.
The SMS sender would say that he needs someone to top-up his new handphone (the number is a local mobile operator) as he is at the police station to sort out some problems, and is currently using his friend's mobile phone.
What is my uncle doing at the police station? That is probably the first question that we may have to ask.
But the fact remains that these "imposters" will do anything to gain from the advent of technology. It is difficult to determine the authenticity of the email or SMS but the best we can do is to check first before obliging to the request. - By Kamarul Yunus of btimes.com.my
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