Who can I forward a scam e-mail to?
I received an e-mail today saying US Bank: Please Confirm Your Internet Banking Identity and naming me as a customer (I’m not).
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Coincidence, I got a similar email today: there’s info on how to report it here: http://usbank.com/cgi_w/cfm/promo/personal/fraud_email_info_and_help.cfm
GorillaMan: Thank you. Why are they trying to scam someone living in the UK with a US Bank hustle? The mind boggles.
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I really wonder just what is accomplished by reporting these to the companies.
They surely know it is happening, and that it has (or soon will) happen to almost all of them. (So far just this week, I’ve gotten fake emails purporting to be from Ebay, Wells Fargo, & US Banks. And probably more I don’t remember.)
And there isn’t too much these companies can do about it. They mostly already have warnings on their websites that they never send such emails, and telling people to not answer them.
So forwarding them anywhere seems pretty much pointless effort, just loading the internet down with more useless messages. What if everyone who received one of these fake messages supposedly from Wells Fargo Bank forwarded it to them? They’d have to hire dozens more people to handle them – think how much they would have to increase their banking fees to cover that cost!
It seems to me the best thing to do with these messages is the exact same as with any other SPAM – ignore it, delete it immediately.
Hard to say what is accomplished by it. But US Bank provides a space for you to do it. Either they want the information (headers, faked e-mail addresses, etc.) or they just want to give people a place to vent.
It’s more than just spam - it’s attempted crime. Given that the email in question does link to a real IP address used by the scammers, it’s perfectly possible that US Bank will be able to collate enough information to provide police (or presumably the FBI) with a real chance of tracking them down. On the page I linked to, they’re asking for more information than simply a copy of the email.
Oh, and as for why they send them to non-US addresses: I guess it’s the same as the US-oriented mortgages, prescriptions, loans etc we’re inundated with daily.
Indeed, GorillaMan, I’ve always wondered why these scams weren’t more easily prosecuted.
I got one of these this week and forwarded it to USBank. The originating address was in Germany, the recipient (me) is in Canada, and the company involved is in the US. This international factor is one of the reasons why criminal investigation and prosecution of Internet-promulgated spam/fraud is diffucult.