NOTE: ALL E-MAIL AND WEB ADDRESSES ARE FAKE OR MADE UP FROM MY MIND TO PROVIDE AS SIMILAR EXAMPLES FOR THIS DISCUSSION WITH THE EXCEPTION OF E-MAIL OR WEB ADDRESS INFORMATION INDICATED IN THE LETTER SAMPLES, WHICH ARE DERIVED FROM REAL FAKE SCAMMER LETTERS RECEIVED. CHASE AND FACEBOOK AND OTHER EXAMPLES MENTIONED AND REFERENCED THROUGHOUT THE ARTICLES ARE ALSO DERIVED FROM REAL SCAMS. DUE TO THE NATURE OF MOST SCAMMER SITES AND E-MAIL ADDRESSES (AS SOME MAY DERIVE THEIR WEB ADDRESS NAMES BASED ON MISPELLINGS OR VARIATIONS OF A LEGITIMATE SITE) IT IS STRONGLY DISCOURAGED FOR YOU TO ATTEMPT TO VISIT THESE SITES SINCE THE CONTENT HAS NOT BEEN VISITED NOR VERIFIED AND I WILL NOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR ANYONE VISITING ANY SITE OR CONTACTING ANYONE IN THESE SAMPLE E-MAILS AT THEIR OWN RISK.
As the Internet grows older, e-scams are becoming more and more intricate, and with the development of image editing and rendering on graphics editing programs, e-mails and other fraudulent websites can now look more and more like the official site. E-mails with sob stories and unexpected lottery winnings also raid your e-mail. Just recently, I found over 199 e-mails in an extremely old e-mail account of mine I had not looked into in years, and discovered that 99% of these e-mails were from numerous scammers trying to find a potential target.
So, it's important that even if you personally feel savvy enough to avoid these scams, it's still vital to become familiar in other practices on how to protect yourself and lend out helpful tips to others, especially to younger children and others not too well versed with computers and the Internet, to help them avoid being caught in the lies of a scammer.
Compromised E-mail Accounts and Spam
As mentioned in a previous entry on e-mail safety, even e-mails are now compromised rapidly by marketing and scamming sites to send spam to everyone in your address book posing as you. These e-mails usually contain links and off-topic comments on "cool websites to check out", which usually turn out to be a whole scam in itself. Several of these sites, carrying from electronics from overseas to "support pages" fool you into trusting them as agreeable resource sites, yet many of these stores fail to even sell and do business accordingly at all.
But with that, it's is extremely important to never click on any foreign link that seems fishly. If the link or icon says one thing, such as Free DVDs but shows some strange link in the bottom left corner that says: http: // zzjlkjsfdk . net / and it doesn't seem quite right to you, trust your gut. It is highly likely that you're going to be right.
A good tip is to try going onto any search engine (I typically use Google) and type the name of the site, in this case zzjlkjsfdk . net. I don't reccommend copying and pasting the whole actual link since the search engine may not compute as many results, but on a daily basis, just naming the site usually will bring up a number of results. It is highly likely that the website is a scam if the results on the search engine pinpoint to other sites, such as government or even just anti-fraud database sites. And if you're even more curious, you could write the name of the site and "scam" as the search tags to see if the results link a strong relationship between one and another.
It's also important to know that if it is indeed a scam, then it is very likely that others have received similar e-mails as well, and they too, might be online asking around if this is a scam. By looking around (but never click the site itself until you deem it safe!) on other anti-scam sites (if you find the site in question mentioned there) and collectively putting the results together, you can then come to a more reasonable conclusion of whether you want to avoid visiting the site or, if you find good, hard proof that it is legitmate, can visit it. However, it is important to know that it is unlikely any special offers or anything that's promoted as FREE is legitimate. It doesn't rule out some other legitimate free sites, yet be prepared to proceed with caution about dealing with anything that is advertised as free or lucrative towards your pocket.
Also, in regards to the e-mail compromising scams, even if (as apparently some sites do sell legitimate items on these strange sites) the site is legitimate, would you feel all-too trusting of a website and business that makes its advertising through hacking you and your friends and family's e-mail addresses?
Showing posts with label E-mail Protection. Show all posts
Showing posts with label E-mail Protection. Show all posts
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
How to protect your E-mail and other Personal information
Your e-mail address might be your key to signing up to several sites, from online shopping on Amazon to using your e-mail to log onto your Facebook, yet it is still extremely important to be careful with where you are inputing vital information to. And with that, there are several precautions you can take to think before you type that e-mail or other information there. Always think before you type or click! You never know what could happen.
The main rule of thumb is: If you don't need to put your e-mail, just don't. While it's nice to apply for special offers on stores and comment on forums and other sites, always look first before you type.
You could be saving yourself some potential risk of having your own e-mail address compromised by spam if you try to limit where you are throwing your e-mail at. I'm not talking also about spam from excessive store special offers, but rather dangerous spam that can take your e-mail address over and use it as a main target site to send ridiculous spam to all of the people on your contact list.
Over these past couple of years, these sort of ploys have been used by several scamming advertisement websites that attempt to take over your e-mail address and send out strange e-mail that most of the time sound out of character to your friends and family. The messages usually contain one to two sentences advertising about a "really cool site" with the link over it, yet nowadays with links becoming even shorter and more concealed (bit.ly shorthand), it can become extremely difficult to decode whether the site you are about to click could become potentially your worst nightmare.
Even though most people are probably familiar with the pharmaceutical spam sites, some are still baffled about how they could be preyed upon if every site they visit is considered legitimate or have privacy policies.
The main rule of thumb is that many websites, no matter how safe or legitimate they may be, can always potentially have weak spots where spammers can attack. It's not safe at all to assume that any site is 100% safe and foulproof, and therefore if you can greatly minimize how many sites you are using your e-mail publicly with, it could at least potentially shorten that risk. Try to minimize the amount of subscriptions that you have in regards to sales and stores as well. If you don't frequently shop there, then see if you can remove that subscription...like spring cleaning!
Besides your e-mail, other vital information such as credit card or identifiy information (such as your Social Security number) can be vulnerable to threat, even if you are assuming that it is privately written in an e-mail or in your computer. The issue is that there are several forms of malware or even if your e-mail has been simply compromised (such as with the excessive spam) that can put this information under threat.
Protect your information!
For children and adults alike, keeping your e-mail address on the low down as possible also helps you from being under threat of not those annoying spammers, but overall from anyone who would want to scam or harm you in more dangerous ways. Nowadays with the easier access to information, a dangerous person could have public access to personal information by just knowing a name or e-mail address (as well as other information) that could lead them to know more than you would want them to know. By monitoring your activity on the Internet (what sites you visit) and what information you are putting where, you can also minimize your chances of having someone obtain information that you unknowingly placed in an inconvenient and accessible place. Think of the yellow pages, and how some people simply choose to be unlisted numbers.
Especially in regards of children, parents should encourage them to avoid giving out their names and e-mail addresses, and of course other personal information, when even on game sites such as Neopets or Gaia Online, as they too can be used by predators to prey on young children. Never give out your home address either! Children must avoid at all costs to reveal where they live, or even a hint of a location of where they live, and even with adults, it is best to be as vague as possible to avoid someone from doing a little too much research.
If you are prone to making new, spontaneous friends, always be cautious of when you are giving your e-mail address out to them. Preferrably if you can, give out an alternate e-mail address of sorts that you can use with them to talk before you feel comfortable enough to converse with them in your main e-mail. This is a suggestion for those who would like to make friends, since the Internet is definitely a place to converse and meet new people, but if you're having second thoughts about whether you want to trust that person with your main e-mail or not, this could be a good idea. It is always important to always never completely trust someone from the first impression. And sometimes even from the second, and much like how you get to know people in the real realm, you have to keep caution of who this person is now and who they can really be. The internet is also filled with people trying out a number of different personas, so it is always important to be mindful about that as well.
The main rule of thumb is: If you don't need to put your e-mail, just don't. While it's nice to apply for special offers on stores and comment on forums and other sites, always look first before you type.
You could be saving yourself some potential risk of having your own e-mail address compromised by spam if you try to limit where you are throwing your e-mail at. I'm not talking also about spam from excessive store special offers, but rather dangerous spam that can take your e-mail address over and use it as a main target site to send ridiculous spam to all of the people on your contact list.
Over these past couple of years, these sort of ploys have been used by several scamming advertisement websites that attempt to take over your e-mail address and send out strange e-mail that most of the time sound out of character to your friends and family. The messages usually contain one to two sentences advertising about a "really cool site" with the link over it, yet nowadays with links becoming even shorter and more concealed (bit.ly shorthand), it can become extremely difficult to decode whether the site you are about to click could become potentially your worst nightmare.
Even though most people are probably familiar with the pharmaceutical spam sites, some are still baffled about how they could be preyed upon if every site they visit is considered legitimate or have privacy policies.
The main rule of thumb is that many websites, no matter how safe or legitimate they may be, can always potentially have weak spots where spammers can attack. It's not safe at all to assume that any site is 100% safe and foulproof, and therefore if you can greatly minimize how many sites you are using your e-mail publicly with, it could at least potentially shorten that risk. Try to minimize the amount of subscriptions that you have in regards to sales and stores as well. If you don't frequently shop there, then see if you can remove that subscription...like spring cleaning!
Besides your e-mail, other vital information such as credit card or identifiy information (such as your Social Security number) can be vulnerable to threat, even if you are assuming that it is privately written in an e-mail or in your computer. The issue is that there are several forms of malware or even if your e-mail has been simply compromised (such as with the excessive spam) that can put this information under threat.
Protect your information!
For children and adults alike, keeping your e-mail address on the low down as possible also helps you from being under threat of not those annoying spammers, but overall from anyone who would want to scam or harm you in more dangerous ways. Nowadays with the easier access to information, a dangerous person could have public access to personal information by just knowing a name or e-mail address (as well as other information) that could lead them to know more than you would want them to know. By monitoring your activity on the Internet (what sites you visit) and what information you are putting where, you can also minimize your chances of having someone obtain information that you unknowingly placed in an inconvenient and accessible place. Think of the yellow pages, and how some people simply choose to be unlisted numbers.
Especially in regards of children, parents should encourage them to avoid giving out their names and e-mail addresses, and of course other personal information, when even on game sites such as Neopets or Gaia Online, as they too can be used by predators to prey on young children. Never give out your home address either! Children must avoid at all costs to reveal where they live, or even a hint of a location of where they live, and even with adults, it is best to be as vague as possible to avoid someone from doing a little too much research.
If you are prone to making new, spontaneous friends, always be cautious of when you are giving your e-mail address out to them. Preferrably if you can, give out an alternate e-mail address of sorts that you can use with them to talk before you feel comfortable enough to converse with them in your main e-mail. This is a suggestion for those who would like to make friends, since the Internet is definitely a place to converse and meet new people, but if you're having second thoughts about whether you want to trust that person with your main e-mail or not, this could be a good idea. It is always important to always never completely trust someone from the first impression. And sometimes even from the second, and much like how you get to know people in the real realm, you have to keep caution of who this person is now and who they can really be. The internet is also filled with people trying out a number of different personas, so it is always important to be mindful about that as well.
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