In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, we wanted to remind you that whenever there is a major natural or other disaster, scammers begin sending out charity relief scams within just a couple of hours!
Online scammers continue to join the looters as more of the Hurricane Katrina scams we predicted are making their way around the Net.
By Wednesday September 14, of the 4,000 sites claiming to offer help to Katrina victims, the FBI believes up to 60% are likely bogus.
Types of Hurricane Katrina Scams
Phishing scams: As described above, many fraudulent websites have already been set up pretending to be legitimate Hurricane Katrina relief organizations. These sites request charitable donations, but in fact steal financial information and may be used for identity theft as well. Contributions, of course, go into the pockets of the scammers rather than to help people who desperately need it.
Viruses and trojans: Spam is sent that includes photos of disaster areas or individual survivors, and these attachments contain computer viruses. For example, the Trojan, Cgab, is now related to a Hurricane Katrina email that is making the rounds. It provides full access to the victim’s PC. According to CNN Money, the email headlines include: “Re: g8 Tropical storm flooded New Orleans” and “Re: g7 80 percent of our city underwater.”
Variants of the Nigerian fee scam: unsolicited email (spam) is sent with the supposed purpose of retrieving large amounts of money tied up in areas devastated by Hurricane Katrina. We were surprised that it took over a week to start seeing these scams.
Investment and security scams: According to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), emails are already making the rounds that tout specific stocks on the basis of activity related to Hurricane Katrina. For example, one email says that investors could more than double their money in just days on certain penny stocks because of “refinery glitches.”
Misleading emails trying to take advantage of the disaster to sell unrelated products. Emails seem like news stories and include a link inviting you to “Read More…”. The link takes you to a Viagra (or similar product) site.
Requests for individual donations to help their family members: The first spam message we saw of this type had two different spellings of the scammer’s first name!
Hate websites: Sadly, a lot of hate websites are popping up that characterize the disaster as the “wrath of God” — and then they naturally ask people to donate to them.
Chain letters: According to Anne Mitchell, aka Aunty Spam, the first email hoax was a request to forward the hoax because fifty cents would supposedly be donated to help victims for every copy of the email forwarded.
Scammers posing as officials from government agencies, banks, insurance companies, credit card companies, etc.: These scammers are claiming they will help victims in some way (such as help process their insurance claims more quickly). However, the goal of these scams is to steal bank, credit card, and/or other personal information in order to steal money and sometimes commit identity theft. So far we’re seeing this more offline than online, but it’s only a matter of time until these scams become more prevalent online.
Contractor scams: Contractors (or people pretending to be contractors) are asking for money up front to do repair work, and then not showing up to do the work. Again, these scams are showing up more offline than online, but they, too, will become more prevalent online.
Fee-based spam: unsolicited emails offer, for a fee, to locate loved ones who may be disaster victims.
Never, ever, ever respond to emails that ask for personal info.
Always use common sense.
To see examples of the various Hurricane Scams and read the full article, click here.