Identifying Scam Email Addresses

Identifying Scam Email Addresses

If money or a job is involved do not trust any company or government using a free email address, such as @yahoo.com, @gmail.com, @hotmail.com, @sify.com, etc. As soon as you receive an email from a free email address from someone who says they represent a company, government, embassy, bank, law enforcement agency, etc. involving money.  It is always a scam!  That goes double when the free email address is chosen to match the supposed company name!  No real company, embassy, bank, law enforcement agency, etc EVER uses a free email address! Read:  How to Recognize a Scam Email/Scamomatic!! 

Some free email addresses are not as obvious.  Always Google the part of the address after the @ that will tell you if it is a free email address.  You can also put the part of of the address after the @ into your browser and it will take you the source of the address also known as the domain.  

Remember, anyone can make a free email address without giving any identifying information and make it say whatever they want it to!  That is why you never trust anyone using free email address who is offering you money or a job!  In many cases, the scammer is impersonating a real company by making a free email address that "matches" the company name!

This is a list of the free email addresses that scammers use the most! 
http://www.419scam.org/419-by-domain.htm 

Any email address that ends in "pn" is a free email address and a scam.  These are free email addresses provided by http://www.popnic.com/  See below taken from http://blog.zeltser.com/post/82580305615/scammers-in-action-domain-names-and-family

Free Sub-Domain Registration

The domain from which the scammer sent the application, immigrationsection.com.au.pn, is considered malicious by some security companies, according to VirusTotal. It redirects webs visitors to www-dot-popnic-dot-com, which some sources consider malicious.

Popnic-dot-com seems to be a front for Unionic-dot-com, which provides free domain registration, email forwarding, web hosting, URL forwarding, etc. under unusual TLDs such as .tc, .mn, .ms and others. More specifically, it offers registration under second-level domains that resemble TLDs assigned to major countries such as .uk.pn, .us.pn, .ca.pn, .au.pn, and others. No wonder it’s attractive to scammers, who want to get a domain that at a first glance seems legitimate.

With the increasing variety of TLDs available, scammers will have an easier job selecting domain names that catch the victims’ attention or evoke trust. Regardless of the domain used by the sender of the email message, if the offer sounds too good to be true and involves supplying sensitive information, it’s probably a scam.

Some scammers use free email addresses that look official like @diplomat.com @consultant.com, @lawyer.com, @engineer.com  You can see a list of them here: Official Looking Free Email Addresses Scammers Use!  Any time you receive an email from one of these email addressees, its always a scam.

Scammers will give you many reasons why they are using free email addresses, ignore them ALL!  They will say its their personal email address.  There is no reason for any government official or company employer to EVER use a personal email address.  They will say that their company or government email address was hacked!  If that is true, they would NEVER use a free email address because they are even more insecure and easy to hack. 
  
Scammers use free email addresses because they can set them up quickly, they can choose any name they want and they are untraceable so they will not be found or identified! 

There are also many other email addresses which are free, but are not as obvious as yahoo, hotmail or gmail.  Many companies offer free domains which include free email addresses.   These include www.smartdots.com www.dot.tk, http://www.com.nu, http://www.co.cc, http://www.freedomain.co.nr, www.cc.cc, http://www.popnic.com, http://www.lyp.nl and www.unonic.com to name a few. The user is able to choose the email address so scammers use these a lot since they can choose email addresses that are close to a real company's email address.  Some of the ones that scammers use a lot end in "cu.cc" like hr@sleepinnhotel.cu.cc and careers@comfortsuithotel.cu.cc 

If you receive an email from a company or government with comes from or refers to an email address which you are unsure of, you should always investigate further.  You can always find out if the email address is free or not by researching the initials of email end in.  For example, if you get an email from humanresources@mitsui.co.cc. Google "co.cc" and  If its a free email address, you will end up at the website of the free email provider's website. The use of any free email address, especially one that is pretends to be from a company or government, its always a scam.  

Scammers also register domains and use the "scam domain email address" to send out scam emails which are more believable because they don't come from a free email address. For example, they will register the domain realbank.com and send out emails from info@realbank.com. However, when you go to www.realbank.com there will be no website or it will say "under construction" , "coming soon" etc. When you receive an email that come from an email address based on a domain (as opposed to a free email address) always make sure there is a working website on that domain. If there is not, the email is coming from a scammer!  Real companies do not register a domain, send out an email using it and not put a website on it!

You can also check the domain registration on the domain.  For example, if you get an email from "hr@energycompany.com"  Go to www.domaintools.com and click on "Whois Lookup: and put "energycompany.com" in the empty box.  This will tell you when the domain was registered.  If it was registered recently as in less than a year, its almost certainly a scam and does not belong to the actual company, if it even exists!

Some times scammers register domains which are similar to the actual company or government domain.  Of course, the "scam domain email address" will not match.  For example, the real company domain will be www.ge-oil.com and the scam email domain will be hr@ge-oils.com.  

Sometimes scammers will list a scam domain email address along with a free email address.  The reason they do this is many times the scam domain and website will be removed for scamming.  When that happens they can continue to communicate with the victim using the free email address and say that they are "having trouble" with their "regular" email address.  Anytime you see a free email address from someone you don't now in an email, it is always a scam!