Birthday Scam?

[feder1]

We had an email from a friend this morning who said she was travelling and could we do her a favour.

She asked us to buy and send an Amazon voucher from a shop to her neice for £200. She would reimburse.

We sent her a personal question to check it was her and have not heard for several hours.

[feder1]

Just heard from our friend whom we had just texted.

It is a scam! She has been hacked. How cruel.

Beware!

The email address is taxservicesllc.hotmail.com which is an american co..

[Infrasonic]

Scam.

Have you checked the message routing headers to see if it's actually from the friend, rather than the scammers just spoofing their email address (which it almost certainly is).
https://mxtoolbox.com/EmailHeaders.aspx

If all the message routing idicates it is actually from your friends account then there's also the possibilty their email account has been hacked, in which case text them if possible to let them know. It's quite possible in that scenario that the password would have been changed to prevent them logging in, in which case they'll have to contact the email provider and try and get the account locked and then recovered back into their control.

[bungeejumper]

Scam.

Have you checked the message routing headers to see if it's actually from the friend, rather than the scammers just spoofing their email address (which it almost certainly is).
https://mxtoolbox.com/EmailHeaders.aspx

There used to be a lot of those about. We had an email, ostensibly from my daughter's friend, saying she had been detained at a Turkish airport and needed £200 for her fine so she could leave the country. This particular girl was not the careful type, so it's highly possible that she may have been trojanned.

It's the same advice as usual when you get these emails. Grab a chunk of the email text and drop it into Google, perhaps adding the word "scam", and see how many tens of thousands of other people have had the same message?

BJ

[Infrasonic]

If they haven't currently got 2FA on for their account they need to set it up once recovered.
With Hotmail/Outlook.com they can use the MS authenticator app. on their smartphone, (SMS isn't fully secure so I'd avoid using that).
The app. will provide access codes even without a signal, another advantage over SMS.

[Laughton]

The usual tell tale is that they don't address you in person on the original email so it seems a bit impersonal (especially for a request for help). They can't, as they send the same email to everyone on your friend's contact list.