Hi everyone,
something really, really odd is happening. My father seems to be the victim of a very carefully targeted email scam, and I was wondering if anyone else might have heard about similar scams.
Someone has created email addresses that are almost identical to those of people like his doctor and my sister, and is using those email addresses to contact him or his friends/family to get information about him.
He got one from his "doctor" asking him to sign and fax back his new nutrition plan. It was on hospital letter head, but completely fake. The hospital is currently checking this out.
Then I got an email from my "sister" asking for information about Dad's siblings, like their date of birth.
We have no idea what's going on. My sister asked the London police about it, and they told her that because no crime had been committed in the case of her email, there is nothing they can do.
Is it possible that this is a really sophisticated, horribly cruel, "nigerian" email scam? Has anyone experienced anything similar?
Thanks for any comments,
Deborah

This scam did happen to me and to a friend of mine in Quebec, Canada, but I noticed it before it went too far. I thought the email was from her and hadn't noticed at first that just one letter in her email address had been changed. It was from someplace outside the U.S. Don't remember the country. It said she had lost all her personal info and needed help. Since she and her mother do travel to other places, I really thought it was from her. So I wrote back frantically asking what kind of help she needed. Then the response came back saying she needed a large sum of money wired to the address of the email. It was only then I carefully checked the email and saw the fake email address. I sent an email to my friend at her actual address but it was not deliverable so I assumed she had realized what was happening and closed it down. Moral of this experience:
1) Always check the accuracy of any email address.
2) Never send money or personal info to anyone without verification.

wow! that's interesting. This sounds so similar. My "sisters" email address was exactly the same, but with one letter changed. It was a gmail account, just like her real one, so whoever is doing this is actually creating a gmail account and using her full name.
I also answered the first scam mail, and got an immediate reply. Then I got two more emails urging me to hurry up with the information. I realised after the first one that something was not right.
This one didn't ask for money. They want personal information, like family members date of birth.

Debo - My friend's email that got scammed was also a gmail account.

The scary part is its medical related in this case, someone who knew your dad is not well and had information on his dr. Etc. I get emails like this all the time they end up in my spam email and I delete them.

Debo, yes, never give out the personal information. This is often a scam to obtain enough information to complete identity theft. People can get basic information from social media (facebook, twitter) which is enough to get them started and given that basic info is correct, people don't think twice. I get a lot of these as a lawyer as I have a public email. I recommend investing in a good spyware program, which detects emails coming from out of country. While sometimes my friends end up in the spam filter, I just check that every couple of weeks.

This is why if anyone from here looks to "friend" me on facebook, you need to send me a message first to confirm you are part of the OCF family as I have the highest security settings.

Since we are on this topic, OCF treats everyone's information with a serious eye towards protecting them. That is why we ask people not to use the real names here (I am an exception) only provide direct contact information to people that you actually get to know here, not to anyone that contacts you from the board. The reason that we have a private message function is so that you can take messages intended for one person, and safely communicate with them, still maintaining your privacy and real identity. Notice that when you signed up you have an option for a visible email address and your real one both� that is so no automated web-bot that wanders around sucking up email addresses will ever get your real one. Most importantly, Christine David and I almost daily block some spammers from our forums directly stopping their IP address and the email that they register with. Please report to one of us if you get any PM's from someone that wants info from you, wants you to buy something, suggests to you that you go to some particular web site for whatever reason, or you find invasive to your privacy in any manner.

Also for those of you who use Facebook, which has its own inherent privacy issues and dangers, I have a public identity there as does the foundation. Please like the OCF page so that we can stay in touch with you with new information; and if you care to, friend me with a note that says OCF in it. I have 1600 oral cancer friends on FB, and I routinely pass on important science articles and the like to them. Remember that Facebook unlike OCF, is in the business of selling everything that they learn about you. Your information at OCF is never sold to others or shared. We get offered sizable amounts of money to do so, but will never engage in that kind of behavior.

In addition to what Brian wrote, email addresses (along with any other personal info) should not be posted here on the message boards. When I edit this out of posts, its to protect you from any of the spammers who search the internet (including the forum) looking for email addresses. If you want to contact another member outside of the forum, you can safely exchange email addresses thru a private message (PM).

If anyone ever finds a post from a spammer, hit the notify button on the bottom right of their post. That sends an alert to David, Brian and myself so we can take care of banning them from the forum and removing their post. Dont worry about if its the middle of the night (thats usually when the spammers like to post) we will take care of the spammer as soon as possible.

Gabe just to be clear, your real email address which is only visible to OCF, has to remain on the profile or the system will not let you back in. One of the flaws that spammers have is they have throw away email address that quickly end up on black lists kept by Google, AOL, Yahoo etc. That makes the email useless/void. If they use one of those on our system they no longer can post or contact others because the system recognizes that it can no longer verify the address. So keep your real one. By the by, we have never had our system breached by someone that captured any of our real meal addresses in more than a decade, and this is a public forum. The software works really well.