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Financial Fraud Law

What is ‘Email Address Tumbling’ And Why Is It Financial Fraud?

“Email tagging” allows consumers to have one e-mail address for every purpose. The attractive feature of email tagging is that it allows consumers to vary their email address to help differentiate when placing orders, shopping, working, schooling, etc., but automatically forwards to the primary email address. This feature on Gmail works in two ways, either with a period or a plus sign. The period works by allowing a consumer to take an e-mail address, JohnDoe@gmail.com, and add as many periods as the consumer wants to the e-mail address, JohnDoe.....@gmail.com, J.o.h.n.D.o.e@gmail.com, etc. 

The feature most often used is the + feature, which allows a user to add additional tags to their e-mail address to easily identify how someone obtained their name. Using the above example, when shopping on-line, a consumer can tag email as JohnDoe+081811OnlineRetailerName@gmail.com. This allows the user to know that he or she shopped online with a merchant on that specific day.
 
These features can be used in combination with rules to route e-mails into different boxes, keeping inbox email volume down, and helping users be more efficient.
 
How does this play into financial fraud? Financial fraudsters have figured out this tip and use what has been termed email address tumbling, so the fraudster does not have to create unique user accounts for their many fraud attempts. So far these features have only been found to work with Gmail accounts.


 

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