Identifying Fraudulent E-Mails

 

I would say that an e-mail mentioning money or a job offer is a fraud if any of the following are true.

1. It is sent to undisclosed-recipients. This means they're sending the same e-mail to probably several thousand people. Can they all be relatives of the man who died or are they offering that number of jobs?

2. The e-mail purportedly comes from a country like Nigeria, Cote d'Ivoire.

3. The sender says he is in one country and the e-mail address is in another.

4. The senders e-mail address bears no relation to the one you should reply to.

5. The reply e-mail address is gmail, hotmail or live and bears no relation to that of the company.

6. The spelling and grammar doesn't fit the sender. If say the sender claims he is an officer of a UK bank and the message uses US spelling, then it's fraud.

So check any message offering money carefully.

Remember too, that there are very few free lunches.