Franklin County Sheriff Gary Toelke issued a warning to area residents this week following what appears to be yet another Internet phishing scheme.
Toelke stated that a county resident began receiving e-mails that appeared to be from Yahoo, stating that Yahoo needed further information from her to maintain her account. The resident did not respond. The request for information increased, eventually threatening to close the account if they did not respond. The resident finally responded.
Several days later, e-mails were received by friends of that resident stating that she was stranded in another country and needed money to return to the United States. The e-mail contained personal information about the resident that had been obtained from her response to the alleged Yahoo site.
The integrity of her e-mail account was compromised, because she had supplied the perpetrator of this scheme with her password.
To correct the problem, the resident will have to change her Yahoo password.
“Yahoo does not send out e-mails asking members for their password or other personal details and it is important to not respond to e-mails asking for such information,” said Toelke. “The perpetrator harvested the resident’s e-mail list to use to his/her own devious purpose, contacting those people with a bogus request to send money that appeared to be from her.”
Toelke concluded by stating that anyone receiving an e-mail containing the name of a person they know, who claims to be stranded or having financial problems, should not respond until they verify the accuracy of the request through other associates.
Earlier this year, the Sullivan Independent News featured a similar Internet scam regarding a Bourbon resident.