Jammed: Full into Capacity

Here’s another one of those ‘phishing’ e-mail scams that should aware internet users, especially e-Gold members. Last week, I received an e-mail from the “account robot” of e-Gold telling me to update my account information because it was ‘outdated.’

Click thumbnail to enlarge the picture.

I’ve been an e-Gold member since 2005 because of my money making activities before I signed up with Google Adsense.

I have not checked my e-Gold account for a long time so I felt obliged to check and change my profile. Without my suspecting that it was a scam, I clicked the link to the account login page. I didn’t know that the URL address was linking to a ‘phishing’ website. Good thing I have SiteAdvisor, a Mozilla Firefox extension, installed so I was redirected to a warning page about the website.

Why I didn’t suspect that it was a scam?

1. The e-mail was particularly sent to my e-mail address.

2. The e-mail was from a AccountRobot_donotreply@e-gold.com.

3. It has the company logo on it although I know that it is always possible to include it in a scam e-mail.

4. The link to privacy policy of e-Gold was included in the e-mail.

5. The overall appearance of the e-mail was not meant to scam.

I had so many questions when I found out that it was a phishing e-mail. First, how did this e-mail harvester know my e-Gold registered e-mail address? Does this mean that the privacy policy of e-Gold is not being followed? The privacy policy states that:

“Issuer” means e-gold Ltd., a Nevis Corporation.

• Unless (1) otherwise approved by User or (2) ordered by a court or arbitration body of acceptable jurisdiction, as determined by Issuer, Issuer shall not reveal User’s contact or identifying information or transaction history to any third party.
• Issuer will not store Passphrase in plaintext. No employee of Issuer will ever ask for User’s Passphrase.

Second, the sender has an e-mail account from e-Gold.com. Could this mean that it’s one of their staff who’s trying to scam the users? Hmm, could it be that there are bases for the previous accusations to e-Gold?

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