Why Do I Get All These Phishing Emails?

This is a common question. After all, many times these "phishing" scams are from companies or financial institutions that we do not even use. The answer is really quite simple.

These scammers use software that can pull (it is called "harvesting") all legitimate email addresses from any city, state or country.  They find a site they want to mimic and then they find out the primary location of the site. During a two-month period in 2006, over 40% of all credit unions nationwide were "phished."For example: the scammer can see or read on a financial institution's web site that it is located in a certain city. They then pull all legitimate email addresses for that city, or even the entire state, and send a scam email to those email addresses.

The scammers know that not everyone who receives their scam email will fall for it, because not everyone will be a customer of the scammed business or financial institution. It really is like "fishing" with a net -- cast it as wide as you can and you're bound to catch something (or someone)!