This morning there was an email from Bob Yarger in my inbox. Rather than try to explain, here it is:
How you doing,

I hope this finds you well. I need a favor from you.

I need to get a Google Play Gift Card for my Nephew, It's his birthday but i can't do this now because I'm currently out of town at the moment. all my effort to get it done online proved abortive. Pls can you get the card from any Store around you? I'll pay back as soon as i get back. Please let me know if you can handle this.

I owe you a lot

Bob Yarger

I don't know how Bob (or whoever) hooked our emails together, but watch out for this.

I've received a fake email from Bob also, going back a couple of years. If you look up old messages on this forum, the email address of the poster is shown. I would guess that's how things like this happen.

It would be nice if there was a way for the emails address' would not show but I doubt that is possible.

This is a fairly common virus making the rounds once again.

What typically happens is that the virus (or whatever malware it is) gathers e-mail addresses from someone's inbox or other places, then sends the e-mail at least appearing to be from someone known to the addressee (but not, in fact, from them).

I've gotten such e-mails "from" people who have been dead a couple years, or elderly people who seem to be susceptible to lapses in judgement who fall for some ruse that gets the perps the addresses.

More:
https://blog.barracuda.com/2018/11/29/t ... card-scam/

What a tragedy!

Received the same email. Read only part of it and then deleted it.

Your email address can be easily picked up by spambots from anywhere it is exposed on the web. This includes "Mail To" style links where the address is embedded in the code that you don't see displayed. Also, bots are smart enough to decipher any way you try to fool them like spelling "dot" instead of using a period. Be protective with your email address like your credit card numbers.

The other way they're harvested is via data breaches which you cannot control. Case in point - I never got any spam until the big AOL breach a few years back. One of the hacked accounts had my primary address in their contact list. Since then, Spam City. I can't tell you if they are still lax on security but they certainly were sloppy then. The best you can do is use a "throw-away" address that you can use for places that demand that you have an account to use their services.

I've also gotten spoofed emails with Richard Gluecks name on them, as well as one or two other people I've known in the past. Of course when you examine the emails, the "from" and "reply to" addresses are completely unrelated to those of the person being spoofed...

No Joe, seriously, I want all your money. Worst part is, I wasn't aware I had sent those out!