Rank: Advanced Member
Groups: Registered
Joined: 7/8/2014(UTC) Posts: 65 
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I have lately been overwhelmed with all sorts of offers to pay me millions of dollars (or pounds or whatever) of unclaimed money. A very few of them want several hundred dollars to expedite shipment -- I can understand the scam here. What I don't understand are those that want simply a name, mailing addressing, e-mail address, and (occasionally) an occupation. Without bank account or credit card number or social security number information, what can a scammer do with that little information??
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Rank: Advanced Member
Groups: Registered
Joined: 7/8/2014(UTC) Posts: 63  Location: London
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If someone is foolish enough to respond, they'll most likely be hit up for more info down the road.
Another possibility is crooks sitting on data purloined from various commerce or financial websites. They have login and email but not the personally identifying info. Get people to provide that and the partial data dump becomes immensely more useful. (And, with an email address, someone can be specifically targeted for hacking their email account...considerably easier than brute-forcing dictionary attacks on a mail server.)
Yet another possibility is crooks are looking for names/addresses to use for delivering fraudulently-purchased goods. "Occupation" would be useful for figuring out if someone is likely to be away from home during delivery hours. Goods can be dropped off and snatched away and no one would be any the wiser.
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Rank: Advanced Member
Groups: Registered
Joined: 7/8/2014(UTC) Posts: 78 Location: London
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This. The people that churn out the scams don't want to turn you off by bringing up the "fees" right away, that comes later after you respond. It's all a script that they run and any response from you, even a "Are you sure you sent this to the right person?" will start the dance.
Usually the need for a fee comes up in the third email from them, once they think they've set the hook. It will cover "administrative costs" or "customs fees" or some other bogus but maybe-ok-sounding charge.
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