....Of great concern for law enforcement agencies in the US and the UK are scams in which fake postal orders, bank or travelers' cheques are sent to victims first contacted online. After the initial contact, they are asked to cash the financial instruments in return for a share of the proceeds and wire the rest of the money to the fraudsters. It is usually after this last step that the victim discovers the documents were not genuine.
Among Nigerian cybercriminals the most prized tool is a piece of software called an e-mail extractor, which trawls the World Wide Web to gather e-mail addresses. Whatever scheme intended, the criminals desire a deep pool of potential victims from which to choose.
"Whatever the project, we always need all the e-mail addresses we can get because you never know who is going to respond," a self-confessed scammer who identified himself only as "Chike," told ISN Security Watch in Lagos. "And the e-mail extractor does just that."
In addition, scammers also frequent internet auction sites such as ebay.com, autotrader.com and chat rooms and social networking sites in search of potential victims, said Chike.....
Bookmarks