Spoofed email address

[ByJings]

I'm a BT residential customer and have a btinternet.com email address.

Today, I received an email purporting to be from a friend, who also has a btinternet.com email address. The email was very terse but it was signed with my friend's name, so I assumed it to be genuine. It was a request for help but gave no details, which I didn't think was suspicious and I replied asking what could I do to help. The response immediately set off alarm bells, as it was a story about needing to buy Google Play gift card as a present for a niece and asking if I could help by purchasing one from Amazon. This was obviously a scam, which I verified by searching for parts of the message on Google.

The email didn't include any links, attachments or images but I have scanned my computer for viruses using Norton just in case and nothing was found, but I have some lingering concerns;

1. What are the implications for my friend whose email address was used in this scam ? Should I try to contact her, and if so should I use email ? She is an elderly single lady in her 80's.

2. Having sent a reply to the initial email, I ignored the response asking for help to purchase a gift card, but are there any implications and/or risks to my own email account from doing this ?

3. I thought BT had systems in place to prevent this type of email spoofing, so how did this manage to get through and can anything be done to prevent further spoof emails from the same source ?

[licquorice · Accepted solution]

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@ByJings wrote:

1. What are the implications for my friend whose email address was used in this scam ? Should I try to contact her, and if so should I use email ? She is an elderly single lady in her 80's.

You could warn her that her other contacts might receive similar emails purporting to come from her and that she should warn them of the possibility. The email won't have actually come from her email address so you can contact her via email if you so wish.

2. Having sent a reply to the initial email, I ignored the response asking for help to purchase a gift card, but are there any implications and/or risks to my own email account from doing this ?

You have alerted the scammer to your email address, so it may become a target of further scams.

3. I thought BT had systems in place to prevent this type of email spoofing, so how did this manage to get through and can anything be done to prevent further spoof emails from the same source ?

There is no way of preventing email addresses being spoofed.

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Your friend's email address was probably hacked at some point in the past and her address book stolen. The hacker is now sending spoofed emails to those contacts. Unfortunately, there is nothing that can be done about it other than warning contacts.

[ByJings]

Thanks for your reply ... it is as I expected so I will have to hope for the best.