For those of you that need a refresher course, phishing is defined by Webopedia as “The act of sending an e-mail to a user falsely claiming to be an established legitimate enterprise in an attempt to scam the user into surrendering private information that will be used for identity theft. The e-mail directs the user to visit a Web site where they are asked to update personal information, such as passwords and credit card, social security, and bank account numbers, that the legitimate organization already has. The Web site, however, is bogus and set up only to steal the user’s information.” The idea is they send out the e-mail to such an enormous amount of people that there will be many who will take the bait and click on the links in the e-mail thinking that it is a legitimate e-mail from their bank or eBay.

There are also the e-mails that are trying to sell you software at ridiculously low prices. I have heard stories of people that have bought software from some of these e-mails and actually received some product. For the most part I have heard that they are simply an attempt to play on the greed of people and use it against them to get your credit card information. These cards are then used to make bogus purchases with retailers who will eventually pay the bill. This is because if the retailer gets duped by these crooks, the credit card companies charge the retailer for the charges and they also have lost their merchandise.

Now we have conclusive evidence that there are unscrupulous people sending out many of the spam e-mails trying to sell us a number of different worthless products, work at home and get rich quick schemes. This is not to say that there are not any honest companies trying to market their products with e-mail, only that the old adage, may the buyer beware, is all too evident in the spam e-mail arena.

On November 4, 2004, we saw the first felony prosecution in the US for Internet Spam distribution.   A brother and sister from North Carolina were convicted of three counts each for a Virginia law which prohibits the sending of e-mails with fraudulent and untraceable routing information. Prosecutors in the case alleged that Jaynes sent or tried to send 7.7 million messages to AOL subscribers in one day. This should give you an idea of the amount of spam that is out there since this is only one person. The technology has allowed one person to send an enormous amount of e-mail with very little effort. It is amazing that it is not more of a problem than it is.

The spammers were prosecuted in Virginia because this is where AOL has its servers located. The jurors recommended that the brother, Jeremy Jaynes, be sentenced to nine years in prison and fined the sister Jessica DeGroot, $7500. The judge in the case will have the option of reducing the sentence in February when the pair are formally sentenced. The sentences will likely be held up on appeal for many years even if the judge does not reduce them.

Jaynes and DeGroot were said to have amassed a fortune of $24 million peddling products with their spam such as a “FedEx refund processor”, “penny stock picker” and an Internet history eraser. Jaynes reportedly received 10,000 credit card orders, for $39.95 each, in one month for the processor. It is easy to see how they could get to the $24 million level very quickly. There was no mention of whether or not the products were actually viable but I would think that if the salesman is hiding his whereabouts, the likelihood of the product being worthwhile would be pretty slim. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.
There are many ways to protect yourself from these crooks and hackers. The easiest way would be to use an online e-mail account such as hotmail. These online e-mail accounts are doing a lot to fight the spam abuse that we are seeing. The more that they stop before it gets to us, the less of a load that is puts on their servers. Most of the ISPs are also implementing spam blockers to help ease the load on us but mainly for them.
There are so many people that are out there trying to get into your system and your wallets. Don’t become a part of the statistics. Whatever you do, do not click on any links in any of these e-mails. And be sure that you are doing your part to inform your friends of the dangers that are out there.