Beware! That is the message for today.
Sadly there are a lot of "crooks" out there in Internet land trying to relieve you of your hard earned money.
This is a warning about being careful to who you give your credit card details to.
So far this week I have received a similar email no less then 4 times from people trying to gain my credit card details fraudulently.
I have been using AOL as my ISP (Internet service provider) so if you are also using AOL pay particular notice of the following and even if you are not I'm sure you can learn a valuable lesson from what you are about to read...
Here is a copy of one of the emails I received...
------------------------------------------------- Subj: Regarding your account. 6313 Date: 7/2/01 4:12:41 PM AUS Eastern Standard Time From: BilIing@aol.com To: ddlax15@aol.com, dinger017@aol.com, ebookcreation@aol.com, fotofili@aol.com, glaciers11@aol.com
Below is the result of your feedback form. It was submitted by (BilIing@aol.com) on Monday, July 2, 2001 at 08:12:24
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: ATTENTION AOL CUSTOMER
Recently, we attempted to charge you $21.95 for your normal Unlimited Access plan. This charge did not process as it normally should. This was most likely caused by one of two problems:
Your credit card may have been over it's limit on charges, or Your credit card has been canceled.
These might not be the reasons as to why the billing process couldn't be completed. To find out, please contact the bank or company that issued you your credit card. America Online, Inc. charges a late fee of $35 (US) for all late payments on accounts. You can prevent this late fee by calling America Online and talking to our Billing Information Department, or you can use America Online Secure Server to update Your account information. Failure to contact America Online in one of the two ways above will be considered a withdrawl from America Online's service's and Your account with AOL will be terminated. Please respond to this message by calling or by going to our secure server WITHIN 48 HOURS of reading this mail. Thank you for Your time and We are sorry for any troubles this has caused.
America Online Contact Information:
Phone number: 1-888-265-8004 (Call Toll Free)
Go to the AOL site to update http://www.envy.nu/depocredit/index.html
Regards, Tim W. Meadows America Online Billing Department, &6325
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Now let's dissect this email. Now this at first seemed legit as I have had some trouble with my credit card and so will 95% of other people, so it is easy to be conned.
This very shifty person is using the email address BilIing@aol.com which is also convincing but notice it is spelt wrong, the real AOL would never do that.
Also note that I can see everyone else that has had this email sent to them (hardly professional)...
Now this one was very easy for me to detect because I'm from Australia and our billing is nothing like the figures above, however the first email I received was not so easy to detect.
Now another complete give away is the website URL you are asked to go to, this one is easy to tell but the first one ended with aolbillingdepartment, making it look real official.
Both times I removed the URL extension to see where the main page would take me and in both cases it was to free web hosting.
The scary part about this is that both sites had all of the official AOL logo's and looked like an AOL page. A very elaborate SCAM to get your credit card details.
Now when you read this I don't know if the above fraudulent link will work as I dobbed them in and forwarded an email to warn the other people involved.
However on any given day when you are half asleep or not thinking straight this scam might have came off, and obviously does.
So in summary be on the look out when giving your credit card details, just take the extra few seconds to double check. Most companies a great to deal with and I have never had a problem paying with things with my credit card online. But the crooks are out there so be careful.
----------------------------------------------------- Allan Wilson, is the owner of the Ebookresellerkit where you can buy the resale rights for a huge package of info products, click on the link below for information http://www.ebookresellerkit.com ---------------------------------------------------------