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• Fake email addresses - Malicious actors sometimes send from email addresses made to look like an official email address but in fact is missing a letter(s), misspelled, replaces a letter with a lookalike number (e.g. “O” and “0”), or originates from free email services that would not be used for official communications.
AOL Mail is focused on keeping you safe while you use the best mail product on the web. One way we do this is by protecting against phishing and scam emails though the use of AOL Official Mail. When we send you important emails, we'll mark the message with a small AOL icon beside the sender name.
Email fraud (or email scam) is intentional deception for either personal gain or to damage another individual using email as the vehicle. Almost as soon as email became widely used, it began to be used as a means to de fraud people, just as telephony and paper mail were used by previous generations.
A compromised (hacked) account means someone else accessed your account by obtaining your password. Spoofed email occurs when the "From" field of a message is altered to show your address, which doesn't necessarily mean someone else accessed your account. You can identify whether your account is hacked or spoofed with the help of your Sent folder.
The current scam is much simpler, and doesn't involve extortion. The company advertises on their online sites, via email, or approaches people through social media sites such as LinkedIn. They then quickly write a low-quality article, sending the customers a copy of the text.
Scams and confidence tricks are difficult to classify, because they change often and often contain elements of more than one type. Throughout this list, the perpetrator of the confidence trick is called the "con artist" or simply "artist", and the intended victim is the "mark".
Currently it is unclear how far back the origin of scam letters date. The oldest reference to the origin of scam letters could be found at the Spanish Prisoner scam. [1] This scam dates back to the 1580s, where the fictitious prisoner would promise to share non-existent treasure with the person who would send him money to bribe the guards.
An overpayment scam, also known as a refund scam, is a type of confidence trick designed to prey upon victims' good faith.In the most basic form, an overpayment scam consists of a scammer claiming, falsely, to have sent a victim an excess amount of money.