I received this pathetic email scam today:

Email Subject: Notice of Underreported Income

Email Body:

Taxpayer ID: graham-00000174073547US
Tax Type: INCOME TAX
Issue: Unreported/Underreported Income (Fraud Application)

Please review your tax statement on Internal Revenue Service (IRS) website (click on the link below):

review tax statement for taxpayer id: graham-00000174073547US

Internal Revenue Service

My Comments:

Firstly, I am not a US citizen, neither reside in the US nor have a job or business in the US, so that pretty much rules me out from being a tax payer to the IRS.

Secondly examining the link more closely (I have deactivated it in this post for safety), the link actually goes to some spoof domain that looks kind of legit to untrained users. I wonder how many people these guys will doop?

According to my email I am rich!

Don’t you just hate getting those totally irritating spam emails claiming that you have been drawn from some or other lottery and have won countless numbers of dollars.

Or how about your long lost relative, who you have never met, or even heard of, has suddenly died and left you with an inheritance that Bill Gates will be proud of. My favorite is when these so called relatives are not only a different nationality, but a different ethnic group – wow how did that happen?

Who is actually stupid enough to fall for this stuff?

Well apparently lots of very naive Internet users fall prey to these schmucks! The messages usually tell you about all the money that is due to you ad all you need to do is send them your name, surname, address, contact numbers, email addresses, identity number and more.

Surely if you had won or had been entitled to an inheritance you wouldn’t need to give them your name and ID number! These scam artists prey on ignorant people and actually steal their identities. What happens next is you suddenly find your credit card maxed out or your bank account dried up. Or perhaps a warrant for your arrest.

Identity theft is a real thing that happens every day. Many, many people are suffering because of it. So the next time you get an email from the Microsoft lottery, delete it immediately!

Another common scam is the “business opportunity” type email. This is where you get asked to transfer money into your country on behalf of another individual and you’ll get a cut. The last time I checked, money laundering was illegal, so who in their right mind would actually do this?

I know that times are tough and that we all need a few extra bucks at the end of the month, but please don’t be stupid!

Another thing that ticks me off are these get rich quick schemes and these amazing new multi-level marketing opportunities – but I’ll leave that rant for another post.

A useful tip to avoid ID theft and protect yourself on line…

Always keep your important user names and passwords safe. For example if you use Internet banking keep your login credentials safe and only use them for the banking login.

For all the other sites that you need to register for choose another user name and different password. I always use a user name and password for all my daily site registrations. If these happen to leak out by some chance – oh well at least it’s not going to cost me anything.

Stay safe! Be free! Klap life! (For non South Africans this means grab life by the balls!)