New Email Scam Sweeping The Internet Resembles Phish Scam Contains Fradulent And Misleading Claims

There is a new scam sweeping the Internet reminiscent of the phish scam whereby unscroupulous people try to trick email recipients into taking action usually by spending money but in some cases just to join a home business group or pyramid scheme where the solicitor hopes to make money off them later.

The newest scam involves leading people to believe that they are or have been engaged in an activity and that they need to revisit their account which of course they never opened in the first place.

Like most scams the letter seems authentic until the reader analyzes its contents at which time the scam becomes blatantly obvious according to Scott Alliy President of the Online Business Ethics Association.

Mr. Alliy who was alerted by his wife who received a suspicious email provides the following description of the type of email that users should be aware of by revealing the nature of two such email he received recently.

In each case the attempt was to fraud the recipient into thinking that they are receiving a member account activity update from an organization they are led to believe that they had at one point became a member of.

The title of the email was Account activity status. Upon opening the email Mr. Alliy noticed two things. First that the email seemed authentic complete with an activity summary which of course showed zero activity and zero payments and urging Mr. Alliy to contact his sponsor at the name and contact info provided in the email.

The tipoff to the scam was that Mr. Alliys name and p.o. box number were correct but the state and zip code was nowhere near correct. Obviously Mr. Alliy points out it would be unlikely for me to register for any program and give a false state and zipcode during the registration process.

The plan is that the unsuspecting victim will contact the email sender who of course will proceed to try to sell the confused email recipient on the merits of their program or whatever scam they may be promoting.

This latest email scam like the types mentioned in this story are clearly fraudulent and are a blatant misuse of the Internet and email systems provided by ISP's around the world and those that teach others to engage in such activities as well as the perpetrators themselves should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Mr. Alliy believes that this blatant fraud and misuse will continue to give the Internet a black eye and negatively affect commerce and trade unless Congress and lawmakers get aggressive and stop these types of devious activities.

Many of the scam artists who perpetrate such acts excel at the art of mental masturbation. Some may consider themselves marketing experts and may actually consider fraudulent and misleading emails a marketing strategy. They take great pride in getting over on others by using various psychological ploys and preying on peoples emotions. Some may even share their marketing strategies and exploits however questionable they may be during marketing conferences thus spawning a colony of gerbels who take the new found perhaps fradulent certainly questionable marketing techniques which they probably paid dearly to learn and proceed to pollute the Internet and email system with yet more uninvited spam.

Mr. Alliy cautions email recipients to avoid opening emails from unknown people and to beware of letters with emotional come ons like the ones that attemtp to play on the very strong emotion of fear of loss with such claims as act now or your account will be closed and others will get the money that you have earned.

Mr. Alliy encourages recipients of such emails to notify the Online Business Ethics Association by visiting the website at http://www.obea.biz and sending an email containing the date title and contents of any such scam email that they receive from companies or individuals with fraudulent intent similar to that described in this story.

About the author: Scott Alliy is an Internet veteran and author as well as President of the Online Business Ethics Association.