Ugh
I hate those emails. I have read that a lot of these phishing or spam emails come from overseas. My favorites are the ones where the grammar is poor. hahaha! Although they have become more sophisticated. I love when I have won the UK lottery.
It is a shame because there are a lot of people out there who really do fall for these things and send their personal info to these scammers.
It is actually not hard to get people's email addresses if you know what you are doing and are in the business of doing it. It has been a while since I have had IT security lessons, lol, but just a few things that I have learned over the years. The tech experts out there can feel free to chime in or correct me if I'm inaccurate.
1. Anytime you put your info out there on the web, no matter how much a company promises, it is never absolutely secure. NEVER. It can be compromised at any time. The security software is a lot better than it used to be so the risk has been reduced significantly. That being said, it is still not 100%. You just have to be careful about what you put out there.
2. Often when people sign up for newsletters or subscribe to "free" stuff, the email address you enter goes into a databank and is sold to other companies and then it gets resold and resold all over the place. That is why these companies can offer their info for "free". Somebody has to pay to keep those servers up and running, a tech staff to maintain the websites, an accounting department to pay the bills etc. Even if the site is not that sophisticated, there are costs involved and it has to be paid for somehow. So your email address is passed around the world. Not every country has good business practices and ethics and so your email address lands in the hands of spammers and phishers.
3. There are a lot of people out there who really don't know about this stuff. It is a shame too. There are a lot of people who are in bad financial shape and just hope that it is true. Look at the Madoff scheme - those people who invested with him considered themselves smart and sophisticated. They got ripped off big time.
I think the Internet can be a useful tool, for example this very website. It can also be a dangerous place. I feel bad for those people who get swindled.
