Email from Bill Fearnley

Hi

I received this email this morning

From: "William Fearnley" <bfearnscot@hotmail.co.uk>
To: <bfearnscot@hotmail.co.uk>
Subject: RE: URGENT REQUEST
Date: 03 February 2011 07:42


I'm sorry to bother you at this time but my trip to London, Lagos Nigeria has been a mess. I was having a great time until last night when I got mugged and lost all my cash and credit cards, It has been a scary experience, I was hit at the back of my neck with a club. Anyway...... I'm still alive and that's whats important. I'm financially stranded right now and need your help. i need you to loan me $2200, I'll refund it to you as soon as i arrive home. I will appreciate whatever you can afford.
I await to hear from you ASAP.
Bill


I no longer live in Penicuik. I assume my email is there from Ladywood Leisure Centre days. I would never give money just to an email like that.

I thought that if this is real you might want to know. If this is a scam and someone has picked up Bill's email list, he might want to know. Please could one of you check?

Thank you.

Somebody's hacked his email account. I got it as well.
I have passed the information on to a local contact (I'm too far away to do much good from here) and suggested he let Bill know what's happened.

My advice is the same as it has always been:-
1. Anonymous emails (those where the 'to' address is the same as the 'from' address) should always be treated with extreme caution;
2. Forwarded emails (even from your best friend) warning you of a possible scam are almost certainly themselves part of a scam. We are all gullible to some extent and in some circumstances; the scammer just needs to "press the right button".
3. Don't fall for "Your Computer May Be At Risk" pop-ups and offers for all sorts of file checking and speed checking and other checking software that can appear when you download something.
4. When you do download a program or a file always run it through your anti-virus software before you open it.
5. If you must use an anonymous email address then please do not use hotmail; it's about as secure as a wet paper bag. (As William has just discovered. As also has my sister-in-law --twice! You can't tell some people.)
6. Invest in a decent firewall and anti-virus program. You don't need to invest all that much: AVG and ZoneAlarm both have free versions which for the average home user do everything that is needed.

Have a nice day!

Follow-up 16:20 GMT I was right. His address book was compromised (as I suspected) but that was obviously picked up fairly quickly by some of the recipients. Object lesson in making sure your systems are secure!

he widnae ask ye for dollars neither

I received the e-mail as well. However, my ISP filters out spam and when I found it there
I was immediately suspicious. I have heard of this scam before as well and then I also
noticed how the sender address seemed to be the same as the receiver which was very odd.
I then deleted it along with the other 50 spam mails that I had received

Thank you for that. I assumed that the address book was probably stolen. Like Sybil, I thought $ looked dodgy.

I was concerned that the text is so like Bill's language. I could hear him saying it (other than the request for money). Other scams I've seen are much more obvious linguistically. I hope that Bill has checked all his friends to be sure that no-one has been bought in.