Wow. I just got this email:

"FYI It was from me, my account wasn’t hacked by anyone. Because I have protected my mail from hackers and hoaxes. So that I wouldn’t be hacked. I am the one requesting a favor. Let me know if you can handle this for me so i can let you know how the gift cards will get to me.

Thank you"

I deleted it pronto and also deleted this person from my contact list. I shouldn't have replied to her first email asking if I ever order from Amazon. Just hope I don't get the same request from all the others on my contact list. Still weird how they chose this person tho. I think I'll phone her.

" Because I have protected my mail from hackers and hoaxes. So that I wouldn’t be hacked. "

Ha! I expected there to be a link to her super-duper anti-hacking software.

"FYI It was from me, my account wasn’t hacked by anyone.

Your email went to the hacker, not your acquaintance. If you want to know if it was really her, call or text directly, not through email. PS, she may not know about the hack.

I got an email from a friend of mine with that same question. Since we always talk by phone, I did not believe it was actually from him. Now I know for sure.

It's so weird, because I haven't emailed her in ages, nor do we talk on the phone. In fact, I'll need to get her number from another friend if I decide to call her. How did they choose her as I said I just saw and talked to her last night in person. Crazy scary these people.

Sometimes the hacker has gotten your list of email contacts, and is using that to try to fool you.

I am sure that FB, back in the day when I first joined, had somehow rummaged through my address book - because they were suggesting people as "friends", who had been only email contacts and that only a few times - & and would never have appeared in connection with me anywhere else.

I have had a hacker trying repeatedly to get into my email in the past few weeks. Fortunately I have 2 step verification enabled, so they aren't succeeding (so far) - and that lets me know that someone is trying.

I get invitations for different things from two of my friends who have died. It’s a little unsettling!

Oly, I had a dead friend's email get hacked and seeing that name in my in box temporarily stunned me. I sat there frozen for a minute....

The email sent to me was 1 weird sentence and a link. I deleted it bc I know better than to open links.....but now I have to wonder if it was some important message from ths great beyond. 😆

Definitely a scam. These gift card hoaxes are quite common.

Sometimes these scam e-mails are a result of folks sending out messages to a bunch of people at once, without using the BCC feature. And if someone's computer is infected with malware that can grab all of the names/addresses in the person's contact list, then scam messages get sent to all of those names/addresses.

This one went around at work last year. I thought the wording was strange, but it was the senders work picture on the sender info. It wasn't until I rolled over the address that I saw the @ was different.

Every so often I get an email with the same name as a friend’s daughter’s husband saying he photos to share. I don't have a personal friendship with him. I suspect someone linked our names as we both are friends of his wife’s on Instagram.

Then I get emails from a combo name. First name of an actual friend, last name of actual friend, but the two together, no. I suspect that one counted on me recognizing the last name and quickly opening. No.

Hey, while you're at it, could you go ahead and buy some gift cards for me too...I'll pay you back...promise.... ACK!

Total SCAM.

The other thing is the phone calls that you get that have your area code and sometimes nearby town. Amazing how they gather so much info.

This morning, if there was another email, I was thinking I'd send a gif animation of a big "finger". But then decided they could very well send me a virus or such to my computer. ha

No emails this morning. I wonder if there is someone out there who got a similar scam using MY email address.

You said you saw this person just the night before but since you didn't exchange information, your phone is listening in to your conversation. This happens all the time. It usually shows up in advertisements about a subject you texted/talked about on the phone. What a stupid request. If someone is unable to order a gft card they should head to walmart to the wall of gft cards....

I've had the exact same thing happen to me with three different email contacts of mine. All three of the contacts were ones I hadn't used in years. The first time I responded to the sender who was asking if I could do him a favor. When he replied that he wanted me to buy a gift card for his niece, I realized I was being duped. The second one was obviously not written by the person I knew. The punctuation and writing style was completely off. I ignored it. The third one was sent to both myself and my husband, again ignored.

To me It seems rather sophisticated to be able to get into my contact list like this, but then the 'ask' seems very clumsy and obvious. If only these people could put their clever minds to something virtuous!

It seems to me that if a particular scam becomes frequent, it must be working at least some of the time.

arcy, my phone was off as I was at a concert and turned it off when I arrived. Still, one never knows about these phones now days. It was just such a coincidence that they chose her out of all my contacts.