Email fraud

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 defraud people, just as telephony and paper mail were used by previous generations.

Email fraud can take the form of a confidence trick ("con game", "scam", etc.). Some confidence tricks tend to exploit the inherent greed and dishonesty of its victims. The prospect of a 'bargain' or 'something for nothing' can be very tempting. Email fraud, as with other "bunco schemes", usually targets naive individuals who put their confidence in schemes to get rich quickly. These include 'too good to be true' investments or offers to sell popular items at 'impossibly low' prices.

Another form of email fraud is an impersonation technique known as email spoofing: the recipient is misled by falsified origin information (From:) into making an anticipated payment into the fraudster's account rather than the correct one. The method is known as phishing or spear phishing: 'phishing' involves sending thousands of emails claiming, for example, that an account has been compromised; 'spear phishing' typically involves a precisely crafted message to a single individual who is expecting a request to make a large payment to a legitimate payee.