There are different types of scam Mails out there. However, for this article we will divide them in three types:

“Regular” scamming: This are the emails, which for sure every one of us have received.  These are emails from strangers hoping to send you millions of euros, Gold, etc., provided you cover their wire fees up front. Businesses are often the target of more sophisticated scams that use social engineering.

“Blackmail Emails”: This kind of messages are already a bit more sophisticated. The attacker usually uses your own email address as “proof” that he has gained access to your computer and caught you on something, mostly on the alleged visit of adult sites, and has fooled you. Now they try to blackmail you and to make you transfer a sum of bitcoins to an account. If you do not do this, he will add the footage to your contact list.

Most of the time, these scammers put more pressure on them by claiming that by clicking on this message, a countdown has been triggered and you only have 5 days to complete the transaction.

Especially by the trick with fake e-mail address and the fact that the users are insecure in such a message and are fearing an image loss, such news have unfortunately far too often success. Exact numbers I do not know, but since in this case the shame plays an important role, the dark number is very high.

“Business fraud”: This variant is very common in the business field, it is often like in “blackmail variant”, the attacker fakes the sender email address. The attacker usually sends messages as a leader from your own company with the instruction to do something.

In most of the cases, you should initiate a payment or reset his password to the one he has mention in the mail, etc.

These attacks can be random and easy to figure out as them, for example I am working in a swiss company and if I get an email from my boss in English to initiate a payment, I know it is be a fake.

However, caution is advised here, these attacks can also be very specific to the company. An example got a few years ago in Italy. In the process, an employee of an Italian Football Club from the Serie-A, who worked in Finance, was asked to trigger a payment which had to do with a real transfer. The attacker has written in this mail that there is still a fee for this transfer and this should be transferred to an appropriate account.