Catholic priest is tricked in an e-mail scam
One of Ireland's leading authorities on ecological justice has found himself at the centre of an e-mail scam. Fr Sean McDonagh, a Columban missionary priest has been my guest on a number of programmes dealing with climate change and other environmental issues. In the past few days, friends and colleagues of Sean received an e-mail from his personal e-mail address explaining that he was in urgent need of help. The e-mail, which purported to come from Sean, said that he had lost his bags, including his passport and money, and needed friends to wire him money to help him get home (whereupon the money would be repaid). Sunday Sequence also received the e-mail, and producer Martin O'Brien called the headquarters of the Columban Mission in Ireland to see if the e-mail was authentic. It seems that someone in Nigeria managed to gain access to Sean's web-based e-mail account and sent the e-mail without his knowledge to the names listed in his address book. If you have received an e-mail seeking urgent financial help from Sean, you should rest assured that he is safe and well.
I've asked Paul Bailie, the executive director of Mission Africa, a Northern Irish organisation which works in Nigeria, to explain why that country is sometimes described as the "home" of the 419 e-mail scam.
He writes: "No-one knows exactly, but it is estimated by some fraud analysts that about 50- 55% of all e-mail scams originate in West or Southern Africa. Advance fee fraud is covered by section 419 of the Nigeria penal code and because so many of these scam emails originate in Nigeria, this type of fraud is commonly called the 419 scam."
"Although spam filters keep many of these fraudulent emails out of our inboxes, most people still get regular emails inviting them to share in untold millions hidden in secret African bank accounts. According to these emails, all the email recipient has to do is send some personal details and a fairly large advance fee, and the huge sums of money will be released to them in return. It need hardly be stated that the advance fee is taken by the email fraudster, and they are never heard of again. It is sad to note that large numbers of people fall victim to these advance fee frauds, as foolishness and greed lead people to abandon common sense."
"Other email frauds are common in Africa. In one common type a person has his / her email password stolen, and the scammer then uses the victim's email to send out requests for money to friends and family of the victim, who often respond, believing the victim to be in urgent need of money. An email password can be stolen by beguiling a trusting person - such as a clergyman or inexperienced tourist - into allowing a "person in urgent need" to make use of the email account and somehow getting the mark to reveal the password to the scammer. The con-men have their ways of getting the unsuspecting mark to reveal such things."
"Other ways of gaining access to email passwords involve the use of phishing sites, or much more commonly, key loggers. Public access computers in Africa are notorious for having key loggers attached, so anyone visiting Africa and wanting to use web based mail in a cyber cafe would be well advised to exercise great care. If you travel in Africa and can only use email in cyber cafes, I would personally advise setting up a temporary email account which you can use on your travels; do not import your address book to that temporary account (print your address book out and keep it safe!) then delete the temporary email account it once you need it no longer."
"There are several web sites that give advice on avoiding phishing and key loggers, but it would appear that no method is foolproof, so it doubly important that you do not leave any information of a financial nature in a web based email account."
Comments
Interesting that you describe him as "one of Ireland's leading authorities on ecological justice" rather than a "missionary" given his recent debate in the Irish Catholic with Fr Vincent Twomey.