ALERT...apparently a new scam from snooping into E-mails

[ironglow]

  Today my son & daughter-in-law received an urgent e-mail, ostensibly from a dear friend. It went something like this...
   
    Dear P_ _ _ and B _ _ _ _ _;
   
     This is S_ _ _ C _ _ _ _ _; I am vacationing in London which has been fun, until last night, when I got mugged. They took all my cash, cash cards, credit cards..just everything. Please send me some money to get home and I'll repay you as soon as I get there. etc, etc..

   My daughter-in-law is smart..she e-mailed back..."Send me some identifying information, known only to we friends"..

   The answer back was something about, "the state dept won't help" etc, etc...  No personal info that both would know...

   Guys; Beware...be ready...

[Spirithawk]

No problem here. Anyone asking me for money is neither a friend nor family member. They all know I don't have any! 

[powderman]

I had a strange contact on yahoo chat. A while back I had somebody pop in and say hi, I xed it out. The other day it happened again. The name was a person I had known for 7-8 years, but she died 2 years ago. Anyway, I wrote back asking who this was and said the Linda G I knew is dead. The reply was, I can't believe you have forgotten me. I blocked it and xed it out. They never called me by name, which didn't seen right either. Very confusing. Ideas??? POWDERMAN. 

[ironglow]

They have probably eavesdropped somewhere in yourt system or even simply watched each of us on a forum somewhere. After all, we each give lots of info during our regular postings..if somebody wants to spy it out. Just have some questions only you and they would know the answer to, such as;

  "Do you remember that goofy thing my little boy did at last summer's picnic" ?

       or,

  "Do you remember when my dog killed the racoon in the backyard" ? (your dog is a teacup poodle..stays housebound)

[powderman]

IG. Thanks. it  really bothered me because Linda was a good friend, we worked together a lot. POWDERMAN. 

[MGMorden]

They have probably eavesdropped somewhere in yourt system or even simply watched each of us on a forum somewhere.

It's more likely that they "eavesdropped" on the system of the person it's supposedly coming from.  What often happens is they'll get a particular worm or virus that once it infects their computer, it will then scan their address book (often targetted at MS Outlook, since many people use that).  It finds a few people they've been conversing with a lot and then sends such a message to them. 

As a safety measure, I assume just about everything I receive via email that wants something back - be it money, information, whatever - as a scam. 

[Graybeard]

Iffen ya think that's sumpin if you have a Google toolbar on your computer and a microphone or camera hooked to it Google is listening and watching everything that goes on near your computer.

These days a wholel lot of cell phones do the same as well. They are listening to every conversation you have with the cell phone on and near enough. Not all cell phones have the feature but many do. I think all the newer 4G phones do. What the heck is 4G anyway? I never even found out what 3 G was.

[powderman]

GB. We don't have a microphone or camera on my pc and I hadn't had any emails by that name in over 2 years. I just don't know who is using her name. I blocked her out as a precaution. POWDERMAN. 

[JoeG52]

4G just means it is 4th generation, like 3G is 3rd generation, just the next 'improvement' in technology.
I feel sorry for the guy that has to listen in on my conversations, how does he manage to stay awake? :-)

[halfbreed]

Powderman, have you thought about contacting the local pd, seems somebody might be using your friends ID. maybe her social security and everything else. maybe contact her family if you can, they might need a heads up if they are able to use her ss ###.
 just a thought, john

[powderman]

JOHN. Thanks, I'll look into that when we get back. Charlie. 

[MGMorden]

Iffen ya think that's sumpin if you have a Google toolbar on your computer and a microphone or camera hooked to it Google is listening and watching everything that goes on near your computer

That's incorrect.  Google does a whole lot of data mining on your emails through Gmail, and your search terms, etc, but they don't monitor audio or video.  If unconvinced,  a simple outgoing packet analysis at your home router (outside of your desktop system so even any allegation of them "hiding" the traffic is unfounded) is all that's needed to confirm this. 

I mean, realistically, you have to understand Google's business model.  They do targeted advertising.  If they notice that you're searching for guitars a lot or talking about them a lot in your emails, they'll start showing you advertisements about guitars.  Same of almost anything else.

With audio/video, there's no way to mine activities out of that without having a person transcribe everything manually (which is incredibly expensive from a man power perspective).  Even if they could get such actions past the objections of the computer community, there's just no good business case for it.

[ironglow]

  My daughter-in-law called S - - - C - - - - - on a landline. She was here at home and said everyone on her E-mil list got the same appeal.
  Not only that; when she sent an E-mail out to correct the mess...it was erased before it could get to her friends./ guess the crooks were buying just a bit more time.
  I think people arte simply telling way too much on things like my space and face book. One should remember that you're not just telling your friends for instance, that you will be away from home on a cruise for two weeks..you're also telling thousands of web surfing crooks.
  If your kids are on facebook, they may innocently be providing much more info than you would have them to.