You must have received several spam mails from hackers offering to transfer huge sums from the RBI, British lottery or from that widower who is going to die of a terminal disease. Those who fall for the trap are duped by the hackers.

In the next few days, you may get mails with sob stories woven around Ebola, the dreaded disease that is giving sleepless nights to nations. Cashing in on the widespread fear of the Ebola virus worldwide, ‘Nigerian’ hackers have reworked their letters by weaving stories around the disease that hit the West African countries.

There has been a spurt in e-mails from ‘Nigerian’ scammers who have written letters with stories woven around the Ebola epidemic in the last two months, Moscow-based Internet security solutions firm Kaspersky observed.

“In July, the first reports about the Ebola outbreak in Africa appeared in the media. While the world's attention was focused on how to fight the epidemic and prevent it spreading further, scammers used the disease to create new stories. In September, we came across several mailings which mentioned Ebola,” a Kaspersky executive has said in the latest report on the spam mail.

The company cites an example of a mail about a rich Liberian lady dying from Ebola. “The mail contains a long story about her children who died from the virus and about the local medical centre which refused to help her. She was willing to donate more than $1.5 million to a recipient who would transfer this money to charities,” the executive said.

In order to make it look something serious, the spam writers would introduce themselves as employees of World Health Organisation. “The reader was invited to a conference where Ebola would be discussed. The recipient was also offered €3,50,000,” the executive said.

The catch here is the victims had to provide their personal data, exposing them to the fraud.

Related Topics