We are away on holiday with family at the moment and as a result, of them arriving chez UK, day travelling to France, arrival day shake down etc, I hadn't looked at my email for about three days.
When I downloaded my email, there were 40 or 50 so I was deleting/quick replying at speed.
There was an email from a colleague in an organisation I am involved with. The email content started 'M0nica' and ended 'Andrew'. So read as a personal email. The text was brief and not quite his style, about being in a meeting and needing some info, I just sent a quick reply saying 'Away until next Thursday' and thought no more of it.
A day later, when I checked my email again, there was a mail returned message saying that this email address could not be found. I then went back and looked at the email again and realised that the bracketed email address was not my friend's but some unknown address. but, thankfully, because of my gap in checking my emails, it was 2 days old when I replied. Whoever was doing the scam, kept each return email box active for only a short time to stop being traced and by the time I replied, it had been shut down. A very lucky escape. Presumably if I had checked earlier I would have ended importing a virus.
I would normally have looked at this email a bit more carefully because the content was a bit odd, but it had both mine and my friend's name in the text and I was in a rush and had lots of emails to deal with, including some which did need a thought through reply, and it just got a quick answer and a click on 'send'
So be careful if you get odd emails from friends and yours and their names are in the text. This is no guarantee that they are ganuine, so check.
