'Tis the season...for phishing and viruses?

I've noticed a big increase in phishing mails to all my email addresses this month, and this last week I've gotten a few virus mails too. I wonder if the scammers figure that people are busy enough with the holidays that they're not going to be checking stuff...?

Most of them are pretty stupid - like this one:

Dear Winner

I m sure this email come's to you as a surprise but this is to Inform that you are one of the lucky winner in the Swiss lotto

Please kindly open the attach file and follow the procedure to claim your prize and please note this is not a virus or spam. (erm actually it's both a virus AND spam)

Thank you

Click to expand...

But I've also received several from Apple that say someone bought a bunch of stuff through my iTunes account (which I don't have) and I should log in to make sure someone isn't trying to rip me off. Ditto Amazon. Also getting a lot of "Your shipment of the big screen tv and outboard motor totalling $25K was billed to your credit card, click here if you didn't purchase this."

Got a message from my bank that they had an important message for me, I should log in without delay and read it. I also got that message from banks I don't bank with. And Paypal.

Anyhow I was just wondering, has anyone else noticed a big increase in those types of mails lately? Or is it just me?

I have received lots of late, and I was also wondering if there has been a steady increase over the festive period.

There are lots of 419 Scam attempts, Banking issues, Paypal Issues, FedEx and Facebook ones doing the rounds.

Nate

That's a definite yes! They started pouring in right around Thanksgiving and have kept at it since. Like you, a lot of the fake lottos and financial bank/card 'alerts'. Some I've received look too much like the real thing. Called one of my banks about it, 'just delete it' she says. I thought their freaking fraud department might want it, ya know?? I suppose as it's such a heavy shopping season the scammers figure we'll open/click anything.

We've even been receiving scam faxes at work - several from some Nigerian prince/king/housemaid (yawn) and ye old 'send us money and we'll send you your prize winnings'. These go straight to the attorney generals office.

Locally, scammers are phoning up people and claim to be with one of the local utilities. 'Just give us a prepaid card #and we won't cut your power/phone/cable/water/gas off.' I received one of these, and by sounding like a confused little old lady got the phone number I was supposed to call after I got the card. (If you sound too alert and young, they usually hang up and won't try to scam you. Insult to little old ladies/men everywhere. LOL) Handed info over to a cop that happened to stop by work (he was taking up money for local presents under the tree for underprivileged). Don't know what happened with that. Cop said it's usually a burner cell phone and the number is no good after a couple of days.

Oh... (edited to add - I'm still having my coffee and my brain isn't fully functional yet) Driving out from the gas pumps at our local WalMart saw a young couple, bundled up in coats - it was cold and windy that day- sitting beside the chain link fence with a big hand written sign on cardboard, "Couple in need of help".

I went thru the drive thru at Wendy's (burger joint) then I pulled over to talk to the young people.... seems their car was broke, he had lost his job and I dunno what her problem was. I handed them some dollar burgers and coffee and told them WalMart was hiring temps for the holidays and the Asian buffet across the street always needed help (I didn't tell them the owners are known to be impossible to work for LOL). You know what? They didn't even thank me for the food. Guess they wanted money, huh? Then when I got home I called DHR (Department of Human Resources) and gave them a heads up. If that couple needed help so bad, the DHR could do something. Sheesh.

I noticed a huge increase in the size of my spam folder recently, makes it harder to spot the legit emails that end up in there.