Phishing expedition

Scammers cracked Val’s Gmail account on Thursday, and sent mail to several (possibly all) people in her address book begging for money and saying she was stranded in Scotland.

This has happened to several other people I know, and I doubt that anyone we know would fall for this scam, but here’s a warning just in case. Most of the scam letters sent out seem to say that the owner of the e-mail account is stranded there, so perhaps the scammers are themselves based in Scotland.

One of the interesting things about it happening to us is that we got a better idea of how phishing scams work, after I had just written a piece on "identity theft" on our family history blog. If you are interested in knowing more and this particular scam, see here.