Although the average user doesn't rely on email as a way to keep in touch with friends, email is the primary way businesses communicate, something that cybercriminals know very well to set their traps with scam emails.
Recognizing a scam email is not particularly difficult, and email services now rely on different filters to identify spam or dangerous messages and prevent them from reaching users' inboxes.
However, ways have been found for scams to bypass these filters, most of the time, and these messages reach users, who are selected based on their profile and their online habits.
The FBI issued a warning last week about a “Work from Home” email scam that targets the college community and seeks to exploit students’ need for money. The message was crafted for this group of people, offering attractive rewards in exchange for a little work, all from their own home. However, the scam requires the victim to transfer some money through their own bank account.
Fraudsters targeting businesses use a different kind of scam. They lure the victim with big prizes, making them think they could pocket hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The cybercriminals involved in these scams are well-organized and do their job, studying their target before striking. Sometimes, they use the email account of a senior executive at a company and demand that the person in charge, such as the treasurer, send a wire transfer to a bank account they control.
Email scams targeting businesses are not as common as those targeting individual users, but they are certainly more profitable for the scammers. A recent report from the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) reported that over 14 months, the damage from such email scams to businesses reached $215 / €191 million, most of which ended up in Asian banks.
Internet protection organizations advise against paying attention to incoming emails and provide instructions on how to recognize these types of scams.
