Email Hoaxes & Spam

Spam

Hoaxes

• Nigerian Email Scam
• Spanish and Dutch Lottery letters

Spam

What is Spam?

In this case it is not a canned meat substance, although that too should be banned. Spam is as most people know the most annoying aspect of using email. Spam is any email that is produced in vast quantities and sent out to multitudes of accounts of users who did not request it.

How did they get my account?

There are a number of ways that spammers (those people that send out spam) can get your email address:

• Your email address can be easily found on the internet. There are companies that store such information and sell it on to corporations to make a quick buck.
• If your email account is stored on a web page as a link, online spammers can search websites for such links and then store them in a database and email you.
• Some computer viruses are major contributors to the level of spam on the internet. There are many viruses out there which can access an infected computer's address book and use that to email out to all users in the address book.
  In short there are many ways that spammers can get a hold of your address. Unfortunately there is little that can be done about this.

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How do I know if an email is spam?

Spam emails tend to have a content that is of no concern to a user or that a user did not request to receive. Most Spam emails will request your assistance in some matter often involving money. They can also take the form of a petition. If there is an email out there that says "Add your name to the bottom of this list" then it is likely to be Spam.

Some Spam email can take the form of a warning that you have a virus, telling you to delete a file and email everybody in your address book. If you receive an email warning you of a virus on your computer, do not believe it - trust your anti-virus software to eliminate all viruses as they come into your computer. More often than not the file they are telling you to delete is a file which is legitimate and used frequently by your operating system.

A more frequently occurring version of spam is the advertising of products (some of which are of a private and of a sexual nature, such as Viagra). Such mass emailing is seen by some companies to be a good way of advertising their products or services but is, to most people, only a nuisance.

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What should I do if I receive spam?

Simply put; you should do nothing. When you receive an email that you suspect is Spam, delete it. If you reply to the originator of the Spam it can only result in you receiving more Spam. They (the spammers) see any response as verification that an account is active. Pleas also do not forward the email on to the Service Desk as we are unable to stop the Spam from entering the system.

What does ITD do to stop me getting Spam?

We use the services of online companies and an internal Spam filter to block Spam from entering our mail servers. Because spam emails are constantly changing it is impossible for any anti-spam program to eliminate 100% of spam emails and at 93% UNE is achieving above industry best practice in identifying and blocking spam.

Email identified by the Spam filter as “possibly” spam will be tagged as spam, with the word [SPAM] added to the subject line and passed on to your inbox.

To identify possible spam the new services use several techniques including:

1. Email coming from an address identified as a source of spam will be blocked.
2. Email without a valid ‘from’ address will be blocked.
3. Content will be evaluated and emails with content identified as spam will be blocked.

Why are some friends and colleagues off campus unable to email me?

The online companies that we use block to block Spam from coming into our server "blacklist" the  IP address of known Spam mail servers. If your friend/colleague emailed you and got a 'bounce message" talking about "open relays",  it is telling them that the server that they (the sender) are using has been rejected. They should contact their IT support to get themselves off the blacklist.

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Spam Filter software for your email software

Outlook 2003 for Windows, Apple Mail and the paid/sponsored versions of Eudora (Mac and PC) have built-in Spam filters that you can use in addition to the spam filters that we use on our mailserver. You can also set up filters directly in Webmail. Please click on the links above for further instructions.

Hoaxes

From time to time, you may recieve an email claming that you are the winner of some amount of money. These emails ask you to provide personal details, and the money will then be forthcoming.

Any of these emails, regardless of what they offer, are a hoax. Providingf any information to the sender will make you vunrable to people accessing your savings or other resources and stealing them.

Nigerian Email Scam

The following information was provided by the NZ Ministry of Consumer Affairs . This is just some general advice that people should take into consideration when receiving this type of email.

"Nigerian" Scams
The Nigerian scam, as it is commonly called, is an advanced fee type of fraud. The scam runs like this - you receive a letter (by mail, email or fax) allegedly written by a Prince or top officer from a company or a quasi government corporation in an African state (the most common is Nigeria). The letter will offer you an opportunity to share in a million dollar bonanza. The letter explains that citizens of that country are forbidden to operate foreign bank accounts or send funds out of their country. What they need is access to a foreign account that can be used to transfer money through. The amount of money usually mentioned is upwards of US$10 million. All that's needed are details of your bank account and a few blank pages of letterhead if you're a company. In return you are offered an opportunity to share in the millions. Sound too good to be true? It is, and should be avoided at all costs! You will be asked to pay a processing fee of tens of thousands of US dollars and that's the last you will see of your money, or the promised share of $30 million. See our Nigerian scam lists for more information and a list of the most common varieties.

This list can be found here.

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"Spanish and Dutch lottery" letters

These letters are part of an advanced fee scam. On contacting the lottery operator, consumers are asked to provide details of bank accounts and confirmation of their identity. Once the consumer shows interest in collecting their winnings, the lottery operators will ask for money in advance to pay administration costs. This request should send alarm bells ringing as legitimate lotteries do not ask for funds in advance of payout - their operating costs are not deducted from individual prizes.

Remember the following rules if you receive a notification of prize winnings so you won't be caught out:

• You can't win a prize in a lottery you haven't bought or been given a ticket for.
• Legitimate lotteries don't ask for funds in advance of paying out prize money.
• Never provide personal identity information to a company or person you do not know.

For more information, see the Ministry's Scam Watch page on this scam.

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