Excellent point. Precisely why I maintain a "zero-tolerance" of anyone attempting to contact me on an unsolicited basis through either the phone or email. Knowing that no matter how savvy I think I may be that there are those who spend a great deal of more time and effort honing their craft of criminal fraud.
Over the years I have had thousands of such phone calls, and to date I have never answered a single one. Now the calls have greatly subsided, but the number of fraudulent emails has risen alarmingly. I guess they've changed tactics. Luckily my email does a decent job of filtering them out at the outset. As for the rest, if they are unsolicited that remains my first line of defense in purging such messages without even examining the content.
Ironically only recently I had such an email I brought it to the attention of my landlord as the content included them as well. I was initially told to simply ignore it as being bogus, only a few days later to be told that in fact it was legitimate, but a poor business decision involving a corporate property management firm that failed to inform their employees in another state. And to think I was contemplating contacting the Attorney General's constituent services representative, and perhaps even the FBI as a matter of interstate fraud!
Basically a third party was negotiating the right to charge tenants for contacting the credit rating bureaus of tenants paying their rent on time to bolster their credit rating. At $9 a month it seemed like robbery, apart from someone like myself who doesn't need such a service to begin with. The corporate landlord decided not to go through with it, and later all tenants were notified. Not surprising this third party entity does not enjoy a positive reputation online, as often their "customers" only find out about such an arrangement after the fact.
My main concern and apprehension remained mostly as while I could identify the third party as a legitimate business, I couldn't verify whether or not the email itself was "spoofed" using the identity of this business just to host some email links that might have gone directly to malware.
Meanwhile some scams and their scammers just keep getting smarter. Making it that much tougher for people like you and I.
