Spammers profiting from tsunami disaster
Tue, Jan 11 2005
The events of the last few weeks have been difficult for a lot of people to come to terms with, but in Australia at least it seems to have brought out the best in human nature. Charity appeals relating to the Tsunami have raised a staggering amount of money for immediate needs such as medical support and food, as well as longer term needs such as rebuilding infrastructure and businesses in the affected countries. Many people have also travelled personally to the devastated areas to help provide medical aid and other support.
The generosity of Australians has been something we can all be proud of.
However, it seems some people don't care about human suffering and simply see it as an opportunity to make some extra cash for themselves.
Over the last week spammers have started sending out mass emails claiming to be victims of the Tsunami, with a heartfelt plea for support in the form of monetary donations.
For example, this is the start of one such email I received:
"Dear Sir/Madam,
We are from a small village in the Aceh Region in Indonesia affected by the recent Tsunami Quakes/floods Disaster that swept through South Eastern Asia.
We have been rendered homeless and have lost all we have in life. Many foreign tourists also were affected by the quakes/floods.
Since we have no other way to survive as of now and have lost most of our relations and children, we have decided to write this letter of APPEAL FOR DONATIONS.
We will be very grateful if you can assist us with any amount of money to enable us start a new lease of life."
The email goes on to provide account details and asks for money to be transferred into the account.
The tragic part of this is that many if not all of these emails are fakes sent by spammers purely to milk funds from unsuspecting victims. The example above originated with a mail server located within the US and I doubt that any funds deposited into the account they provided would find their way into the hands of those affected by the Tsunami.
Some spammers are going a step further and sending emails purporting to be from charities and relief agencies operating in the area. They direct the recipient to visit a website designed to look like a charity site, where the victim's credit card details are taken and then the account cleaned out.
The moral of the story is never to accept unsolicited appeals sent via email at face value. Over the last year we've all been exposed to numerous "phishing" scams from spammers sending email pretending to be from a bank and asking you to confirm your account details, and this latest development is really only the next step in the evolution of such online scams.
I encourage you to continue to give generously to the various Tsunami appeals, but make sure you do so only through charities that you know and trust.