The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Beware of easy pickings over email

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Oct 25, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Beware of easy pickings over email

M. Raghuram

BANGALORE: How do you feel when you find an email from an unknown source stating that you have won a million in the world’s most powerful currencies — say, pound sterling and dollars?

If you are sensible, you delete it and get on with your life. If you are not very savvy with cyberspace shenanigans, you will read on to see that the email asks some simple details such as name, occupation, address, marital status and, most important of all, your bank account number.

Some of you will have no reason to disbelieve the veracity of the emails as they claim to have come from mega corporations that have certain gaming programmes inducted to “honour” the e-mail users, browsers and surfers on the Net.

Next, you will be asked to get in touch with the “fiduciary” who is an “agent” of the company and furnish with him the details of the claimant.

All this will have to be formalised and money transferred in to the account of the “winner” within 24 hours. This process will take a long time, the sender advises, warning that the receiver keep the winning information confidential.

The mail will also have a series of numbers of the “ticket” which the receiver had not applied for, a batch number which is nothing but a jumble of numbers in odd batches.

Next comes the bait. Some procedures entail expenses of say, $1,300. There are some smart “winners” who have asked the senders to cut the charges from their prize money and remit the rest to their account.

As for the others, you know, as they say, there’s one born every minute…

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