Not my friend Tony

[Grangela]

This morning I had an email from my friend Tony in the UK. Or so I thought. But I smelled a rat. It was more formal than his usual style. He said he’d been trying to buy an Amazon token online for a sick friend, but he couldn’t make it work. Would I try for him. If I agreed he’d send me her address and what did I think of £150, which he’d pay back, of course. So I phoned the real Tony whose address had been compromised. It would have been so easy to be conned. I’ve known him for more than 40 years and wanted to help. Tony (the real one) has now changed his email address.

Bonne soirée, Angela

[Char]

Well done for having the sense to check - they're crafty whatsits these scammers aren't they.

[exile]

Tony should also probably inform his banks that his personal data has been harvested - contact fraud department. They may have a bit more than his email address and address book.

[rabbit]

And he should change all his passwords and run an antivirus app

[Mangetout]

I had a recent similar experience on another forum. They accused me of having two accounts running from the same email account. Not only is that highly unlikely but they refused to discuss it. Very strange.

[DaveW]

A useful thing on apple iCloud is ‘hide my email’. Whenever you give a mail address, use this and it will send mail responses to your specified home address, completely hidden from the sender.

Any funny business and you block the address.

[glazedallover]

I have seen these scams a couple of times. They usually hack a hotmail account, but if you reply you will see that in any further communication , your friend's "account" has subtly changed to a gmail account.

[Char]

I had a recent similar experience on another forum. They accused me of having two accounts running from the same email account. Not only is that highly unlikely but they refused to discuss it. Very strange.

That's a bit odd, you would have thought they would have wanted to discuss it with you so they could work out what was going on, especially as you're not someone who causes trouble. Every forum I've been involved with I've set it up so that you can't have two accounts using the same email address, I thought it was standard practise now a days. Don't let it upset you Mangetout, it's not worth it.

[Mangetout]

I agree it was strange. I asked when the 'ghost' account was set up and what posts had been made but I'm afraid they weren't willing to discuss it. I happen to have disagreed with someone who is quite dominant on that forum so I presume that was my punishment. Ah well. You live and learn.

[tagh]

I moderate another forum and can see posters email addresses so can or could pick up different messages from the same address but it hasnt happened yet.