OH WOW that's crazy! Haven't gotten anything like that before! GAH!

My aunt got that a couple of years ago, and fell for it. She was 85. She went out and bought the gift cards, then called me, realizing it might be a scam. I assured her it was. I suggested she ask her DIL to sell the cards for her on her local private FB group (people have done that).

That has been going around for ages and ages. Her email was hacked, and she never got your return message, it went to the bad guys. She needs to change her password ASAP, and report to her ISP.

We got those emails from dh's uncle. The scammer hit up a bunch of us that were related. We realized what happened and put a stop to it.

Wow! That's just evil. Thanks for the heads up.

The gimmick where the return address for an email you receive is plausibly someone you know has been around for a good while. When emails travel across the internet, they're in clear text, not encoded. An evil-doer with access or who breaks in and gets to a router handling traffic, or to a website with user info that includes an email address, has the email equivalent of a valid phone number with which to send out phony messages.

There was a time a few years ago that I got a bunch of obviously phony messages from people I know who had Yahoo email accounts.

I keep getting emails from dead friends, from their legit email addresses. I don’t open them, but always wonder if there is a scsm other than malware inside.

Olychick- I've had that happen too. The first time the deceased person's email turned up in my in box I about had an out of body moment. It was a very weird feeling. All the message had was a link, which I did not click. What if they were trying to send me a message from beyond the grave? The world will never know.....

I agree patrice! It weirded me out at first, but then I realized I didn’t think I’d ever hear from them again - but then I did!!

I just now got a new one. Supposedly from a woman I sold a puppy to in 2008, last heard from her in 2019 when her dog passed away. We had lunch together twice when she visited the puppies before taking hers home.

The email just had a link and said "I thought you might recall the person in this photograph" with a link. And the message was a forwarded message.

There was no way I would click that link.

Don't believe everything you get as email, even if you recognize the name.

My most recent phish was supposedly from AT&T, telling me my grandfathered in email address would no longer be supported by them -- starting that day! I almost fell for it until I noted the sender's address -- deffinitely NOT from At&T.

It's good to keep these scams in mind so we don't fall into a trap. The email address supposedly from my friend was almost identical to her real email address, just an extra "a" added in. So I could have looked at it and thought, "Yeah, that looks like Mary's address."

Socks, since you replied to the scammer email I hope you PC wasn't compromised? Not sure if that can happen by replying, just wondering? Anyone know?

Bpath, did your aunt have anymore problems after replying to her scam emailer? Thx

Right, vgkg, that's a concern, the computer, but so far it's ok.

Thx Socks, they say not to answer them (weird looking emails), but when responding to who is supposed to be the sender you compose a new email for them, or call them to check if it's really from them.

Well, I did wonder why she didn't just tell me what she wanted in the first email. So I guess a general rule is that if you get an email from anyone asking for help, CALL them to be sure it's legit.

I regularly get email with the subject "you need to update your apple password." I have no apple products. This morning one's subject was I won a bunch of money. I often get email from relatives I never hear from so if you hover over the name the real address appears and it's not theirs...DELETE w/o opening is the only safe way to deal with these.

Lately I've been getting emails (almost daily) from various widows with cancer who are trying to give their money to an orphanage and NEED MY HELP. Or the head of some government agency who is trying to get my inheritance to me, or who has arrested some criminal ring and needs to get my stolen funds back to me... All but one of these have come from gmail addresses. I never open the emails, but I do report them to gmail and my email provider. I click on "view message source" which safely shows me the IP it came from and the text of the message.

I've been getting other spam, which all lands in my junk folder. Much of it looks like legit marketing, but I don't open it either - just click on "show message source", then copy/paste to report it to my email provider. That type lately has been coming from various @xxxx.us email addresses (all spoofed probably) but one thing in common - although they arrive via multiple internet service providers from all over the world , they all show a sent time of GMT+9 (which is Russia, Korea, Japan etc)

What email provider does everyone use? I use gmail and I get almost zero spam. Just checked my spam folder and the two items in there, for the past month, are both legit but things I marked as spam because I'm not interested.

My old email provider had no spam filters at all, and I got tons of spam. Now I get almost nothing. I got the phishing mail, but not what I consider true spam, it came from someone's email account being hacked.

Anyone else use gmail?

many use gmail. I do.

I use gmail and get very little spam.

I have both gmail and msn. Both get spam, both are excellent at filtering the spam to the junk file. Whether you are getting spam isn't due to the provider, it is about whether your email address has gotten into circulation on lists purchased by networks of spammers.

I suspect that the phishing I am getting from gmail accounts lifted my email from a certain charity (because they all lead back to a certain region of the world that I have donated to).

I guess we just cant trust anything more, o sad : ^(