Alert: Email Hacker Scam in Trading Business
It’s not news that some scams are found in trading business. But what I am talking about is not between the scamming seller and the buyer who being cheated. It’s about they are both cheated by hackers who have snatched one or both of their email accounts and cheated by send scam emails. When the buyers ready to placing order, the hacker send them a wrong bank account from the seller’s email so the buyer lost his money and the seller get’s nothing too.
This is the most cheeky scam, not only about the trader’s money being scammed but it makes the trust between buyer and trader vanished. Trust is above all the most important in trading business. This made the trading business even more harder to move forward and increasing the cost of sourcing and purchasing.
By reading several stories of this trading email scam, I found it generally go like this:
1, Don’t know at what time, the buyer, or the seller’s email was hijacked. The hacker got the password of their emails.
trading email hacker scammer fishing email sample
2, The hacker delete their each other’s email account and change it to a similar one. For example, if the seller’s email address is hellokitty@hotmail.com, they will register a email hellckitty@hotmail.com. Take care of the difference! It’s hellckitty not hellokitty. The hacker use this email address instead of the sell’s original email address in the buyer’s address book. So the next time, when the buyer send “seller” an email, it goes to the hacker’s email hellckitty@hotmail.com but not hellokitty@hotmail.com. The hacker then, use the seller’s email (he already got it’s password) reply buyer, but the real seller don’t know anything of this. If they seller found something strange, like why buyer didn’t reply me for so long time, why this why that, he may send buyer an email but it will probably be deleted by the hacker from the buyer’s email address. Or the buyer’s email address has already be changed to another hellokitty like account without any notice by the seller. So they just send and ready to the hacker now. The hacker will try his best to make the deal and finally give the buyer a wrong bank account. If the buyer is cautions enough, he might give a call to seller to confirm this, by which he may avoid a big cheat, but if not, he might probably send the money to this hacker scammer.
3,What is worst is, no matter the buyer or the seller, they are very hard to get their money back. One seller who’s buyer scammed $60,000 on a business forum told that when the went to the police station, both of the police station regret to put on record. The bank even regret to provide the register’s information of the bank account scammer used.
Here I have some tips for you to avoid this nightmare happens on you:
1.Avoid to use common email service like hotmail.com, aol.com, gmail.com. They are very easy to build a hellckitty account. Especially hotmail.com, this is the most hacked email service. Strongly recommend you to use a private email address, e.g. we use @sourceshunter.com as our company email.
2.Secure your computer. Scan it frequently with some powerful software set. Don’t click unknow or unverified url, don’t open unknow or unverified documents send by MSN, email or wherever you download. Try your best to keep your computer away from spyware, keyloggers, trogen horses, adwares, browser hijeckers.
3.Change your email password frequently.
4.Beware of any email account change and bank account between you and your business partner. Try to give a call to confirm this before send your money.
5.Once you found you have send your money to a scammer’s account, call your bank to stop this transaction asap but not the police man, they do nothing on this. Not only the buyer, seller should also try to help to stop the money goes to the scammer’s account because you are here in China and the scammer’s bank account is probably in China as we studied some cases.
We believe this is not a one person job, it need a quite professional team to processed this whole job. They should have good PC tech guy who is the hacker in their team to get the password of the email account. They should have people who is familiar with the trading process who work out the scam emails. They should have people who in charge of register bank account and they should have people who to take the money out of the bank.
This new kind of hacker scam should beware of any businessman especially traders who use email as the first channel to communicate. Interpol, banks and international chamber of commerce and WTO should look into this as this business crime with make the global trading environment even worse.
If you’ve encountered this kind of scam welcome to post your store here to let others know.
About author: Lucky Zhang is founder of China Sources Hunter Limited, Senior sourcing specialist, after have been working as a overseas sale in different kinds of companies and factories in China for 5 years, he setup China Sources Hunter Limited, a Hong Kong registered company, in the hope of help oversea buyers buying from China more comfortable and save their money.
