Hello. Recently, I am often asked questions from readers of the blog "IT Technician" with the following wording: "letters come to the mail about the transfer of money - what is it?" or it may be an inheritance bequeathed by a wealthy relative from another country. Confirmatory notifications about the execution of the application for the accrual of money are often received. How to react to such messages, what they really are - I'll tell you now.
Associated Bank you received a transfer in the amount of (amount)
Most often, people find letters with this subject in their e-mail inbox. The amount of money can be different - from 1 thousand dollars to several hundred.
Such mailings have appeared a long time ago, but from time to time they subside, and then again cover the network with a new wave of activity. Sometimes the text of the notification is in English, but in most cases - in Russian (with a clumsy translation).
In fact, Associated Bank really exists and is a fairly reputable financial institution. But he has nothing to do with such letters. This is the work of scammers who try to lure naive recipients into their networks.
What are the goals of the "villains"?
Obviously, you will not get any benefit, but it is quite possible to expose yourself and your computer to danger. Behind all the "super offers", "approved applications", "thousands of bank transfers", "legacies" are hidden the following things:
- Banal mailing of spam. You open an e-mail, and there is a letter about earning millions in one hour (or something similar) with the help of online casinos, trading exchanges. Usually the messages are very colorful and designed in such a way as to arouse the interest of readers, make them follow the link. But I would not recommend doing this. Even if you are offered an introductory bonus (500 or 1000 rubles, for example), at first the system gives you the opportunity to win. But this is while you are operating with virtual money. As soon as you bring in "your hard-earned money", you will quickly lose them.
- Establishing a connection with the victim. Usually, an inheritance divorce means that you open the letter, read it, take an interest, and to confirm the seriousness of intentions, the attackers even attach scanned copies of documents (where the amount of the transfer is indicated, the reason, who is the recipient). But in order to get all this, you need to pay a deposit of a certain amount by replenishing your Qiwi wallet (Qiwi). It is clear that they are simply trying to extort money from you.
- Viral infection of the computer. This is the worst thing that can happen. If you open a file attached to an e-mail, you can start the mechanism of initially hidden actions. Nothing seems to be happening, but the Trojan has already started doing unpleasant things - monitoring the user, sending data to remote servers. And then the system can be blocked, the information encrypted. Suffice it to recall the recent virus that caused a lot of trouble around the world.
I have repeatedly warned in my anti-virus articles that you should never follow links from letters from unknown recipients. Do not run attached exe or zip files without first scanning with a security utility.
Even if you really want to open an email about the receipt of money from the Associated Bank, it is better not to do it! Separately, I would like to say about duplicates of popular email sites. For example, you follow the link "meil.ru" (without noticing the wrong letter in the name), find yourself on a resource identical in design, enter your username and password to access the "Inbox" list. And then it turns out that you indicated your personal data on the attackers' page, after which (most likely) your real mail account will be hacked, and spam will be sent from it.
How do scammers find out the address, to whom to send?
I partially answered this question above (via hacked accounts). But there is also such a thing as "sale of subscriber bases". This is a fairly common scheme on the internet. People register on different sites, leaving an e-mail, phone number, etc. But in any service a "rat" can start up, which has access to the list of all addresses. Through such "individuals" personal information gets on sale, any fraudster can take possession of it.
Or you yourself open the visibility of contacts on social networks. Specially hired workers look through thousands of profiles a day, collect this kind of data and enter it into the database. Therefore, I recommend that you do not indicate real contact information on social networks, unless absolutely necessary. Or create a second e-mail specifically for this purpose.
The same goes for telephone numbers. They can also be purchased on the "black market", which is what many advertising agencies do, calling potential customers. I am sure you have encountered such a phenomenon when they start calling several times a day, offering all sorts of goods and services. And it is almost impossible to "unsubscribe" from them.
What to do with transfer and inheritance letters?
First of all, do not open and do not follow the requirements of intruders. Alas, you cannot remove yourself from the mailing list. But it is quite possible to protect yourself from annoying letters.
Each mail provider has a filtering setting. For example, in Gmail it is enabled by default. Therefore, such spam rarely comes to Google mailboxes. But in Yandex and Mail.Ru, you need to set rules, set filters:
This way you can define actions to be applied to messages from specific sources. For example, so that emails are immediately deleted or sent to a special folder.
I will not give specific instructions on how to set it up, as the interface changes very often. If the topic is interesting, then go to the box settings and see links to help information. There you will find answers to all questions.
I hope I answered the readers' question "letters about money transfer are coming to the mail - what is it?"
Sincerely, Victor!