Why you must not reply to scammers

Unless you are an experienced scambaiter, simply do not reply to any scammers’ unsolicited mails. Who knows, even a cheap 419 scam mail may turn out to be a hacking attempt to steal your personal data. All the scammers need to do is attach some “documents” with virus when you reply to them.

If you prefer to simply delete scam mails, that is great. You don’t have to read the rest of this blog.

However, if you decide to play with “fire”, not all scammers are the simple and cheap-type.

Let’s say that you decided to test the 419 scammers by asking them to send you some “documents” as proof from the banks, or business partners. Would you actually open these documents? What if these documents contain virus, trojans and malware that is intended to retrieve]]> other information from you?

It might be fun to read the relatively harmless replies from those straight and naive 419 scammers, in all those scambaiting attempts. However, with high tech scams on the rise, we do not think it is impossible for the smarter scammers to combine various scam and phishing methods into a single package.

In some earlier news, we have already seen how 419 scammers have hacked into personal email accounts by phishing method, and using the hacked account to request “money transfer” from friends of the email account which was hacked.

Don’t always assume that you are always dealing with a simple scammer and you know all his tricks. You might just be the first guinea pig trapped in a new scam package.

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