Police rescue man and daughter kidnapped by email scammers

Most of us have received a 419 email scam. You know the kind – they claim that you’ve inherited a fortune from someone you’ve never heard of who came to a sticky end, or that your number has come up in a lottery that you never bought a ticket for.

Sometimes they’re funny in their general wackiness, but there is a serious threat – in so much as some people (maybe people not as cynical as you and me) believe the emails to be true, and end up out of pocket as a result.

Well, losing money from an email scam is one thing.. but what about losing your liberty?

News reaches us that South African police have rescued a South Korean man and his daughter, after they were lured to the country by a scam email telling them they had won a fortune in a lottery.

According to The Guardian, the unnamed 65-year-old man arrived in Johannesburg with his daughter…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the anti-virus industry having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent security analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of computer security, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter at @gcluley, on Mastodon at @[email protected], or drop him an email.