Most of the spam that you receive is simply a nuisance and is easily recognized as such.  Spam is the new junk mail.  However, we all must realize that the common use of the Internet has led to the development of entirely new types of crimes and is allowing criminals from all over the world to easily reach you at your desk.

 

It is possible to send an email message that appears to be from anyone, and anywhere, and saying whatever the sender wants to say.  We have to be aware that messages we receive that appear to be from our financial institutions, from the courts or from service providers may not actually come from them.  In the initial days of fraudulent email messages, we were told to ignore messages with spelling errors and bad grammar.  This advice is no longer sufficient.  Criminals are able to send email messages that look almost exactly like legitimate messages and in some cases that actually come from the legitimate source.  The logos are the same, the email address appears to be correct, and the formatting and language used in the message is appropriate.

 

The scammers use phishing and spoofing to entice you to either click on a link or to share some personal or financial information about yourself or your firm.  These messages may appear to come from a legitimate source.  They may appear to come from a senior partner down the hall or close colleague.  If you respond to the inquiry, you will likely be asked to share financial or personal information.  If you click on the fraudulent link, your computer will likely be infected with some type of malware.  In the worst case, the thieves will be able to control your computer remotely and access all of your information.  They may also completely lock your computer and demand a ransom before they allow you to access any of your data.