- Email scam: A scam email is nothing but a fraudulent business scheme sent by an email. The “request for help” type of e-mail fraud takes this form. An e-mail is sent requesting help in some way, but including a reward for this help as a “hook,” such as a large amount of money, a treasure, or some artifact of supposedly great value. Other form of fraudulent help requests is represented by romance scam. Under this, fraudsters (pretended males or females) build online relationships, and after some time, they ask for money from the victims, claiming the money is needed due to the fact they have lost their money (or their luggage was stolen), they have been beaten or otherwise harmed and they need to get out of the country to fly to the victim’s country.
- Email Spoofing: E-mail sent from someone pretending to be someone else is known as spoofing. Spoofing may take place in a number of ways. Common to all of them is that the actual sender’s name and the origin of the message are concealed or masked from the recipient. Many, if not most, instances of e-mail fraud use at least minimal spoofing, as most frauds are clearly criminal acts. Criminals typically try to avoid easy traceability.
- Email Phishing: Email Phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an email. A user is directed to enter details at a fake website whose look and feel are almost identical to the legitimate one. Even when using server authentication, it may require tremendous skill to detect that the website is fake.
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