By Emily Miller
With the advancements of technology, email scams have become a regular practice for criminals to commit fraudulent and deceptive business practices used to swindle consumers out of large sums of money.
Scams can range from the traditional bait-and-switch operations to phishing schemes, which use a combination of email and bogus websites to trick victims into divulging sensitive information.
In most recent news, the Federal Trade Commission has taking action against a website operator that allegedly tricked consumers with spam emails that falsely claimed that consumers would be violating the Affordable Care Act (ACA) if they did not immediately click a link to enroll in health insurance.
Charges have been brought against Kobeni Inc., a Florida-based Corporation, and its president, Yair Shalev, for allegations regarding ACA-related fraud.
From at least May 2013 through August 2013, the defendants sent consumers emails with statements regarding their current health insurance coverage, according to the FTC.
The defendants attracted consumer attention by emailing statements such as:
Today is the deadline to make your election or be in violation of Federal Law
Must Receive Your Election or You Will Be In Election of Federal Law
Effective Monday (08-05-13) health coverage is REQUIRED BY LAW.
Why is this mandatory? New Federal Law signed by the President made it mandatory for all U.S. residents to have active coverage. You will be violation and face penalties if you do not elect.
You Must Select One of These 5 Options
In January 2014, the FTC filed a complaint against Yair Shalev and Kobeni Inc, alleging that their misrepresentations violated Section 5 of the FTC Act and their spam emails violated the CAN-SPAM Act.
Links in the email messages led consumers to websites that features advertisements for health insurance, according to the complaint.
The websites’ operators paid the defendants when consumers clicked links contained in the ads. Insurance companies whose ads appeared on the websites did not authorize the email messages.
Charges were brought against the defendants as they mislead consumer to believe that they would be in violation of federal law if they did not select health insurance by the dates that appeared in the email messages. This is in direct violation of Section 5 of the FTC Act.
Additional charges were brought against the defendants as they allegedly violated the CAN-SPAM Act by not providing consumers with the option to opt out of future emails and sending commercial email messages that did not include the sender’s physical postal address.
Today, August 12, 2014, the FTC announced that the email spammer and his company would pay $350,000 to resolve charges and consumer complaints.
The settlement also prohibits the defendants from committing similar activities in the future. If either defendant commits the same or a similar email scam, a steeper settlement will be issued in addition to legal action.
To further protect yourself against these scams, the United States Computer Emergency Readiness (US-CERT) team has compiled a series of recommendations to minimize your chance of falling victim to an email scam – such as the one above:
· Filter Spam
· Don’t trust unsolicited email
· Treat email attachments with caution
· Don’t click links in email messages, unless from a trusted sources
· Install antivirus software and keep it up to date
· Install a personal firewall and keep it up to date
· Configure your email client for security
Express extreme caution when dealing with any personal or sensitive information via email or Internet. If you have any questions regarding your policy, immediately contact your agent or insurance company in-person or over the phone.
It is advisable to use contact information found on your policy or previous billing statements rather than searching for the information via search engine.
