Remember that mention below of the “bad apple” email users – those email users that take undo risk when receiving, opening and responding to email from unknown sources? Well, here we have one such example.

419 Scams have been on the rise since early February, and today it was announced that a young woman from Frankfort South Africa fell for a well known variation of the scam and lost more than $178,000 US Dollars (1.2 Million South African Rands) to a group promising 1 million British pounds of prize money she had won.

After paying thousands of Rands into an anonymous bank account and paying various individuals for their assistance “helping” her claim her prize money, the woman had still not received any payout and reported the incident to police.

The dangers lurking in email inboxes – when they go unchecked - are incredible.  If you do not have an email protection solution in place that blocks email from illegitimate and/or unknown senders, make sure you and your email users are not opening email from sources you don’t recognize. 

419 scams are not going away, but are easily avoidable. For more information on 419 scams, click here.