Turn on your computer and you open yourself to a world of professional lame-o people trying to trick you into giving them your passwords, your money, and your first born.
About 70% of mail being sent is spam. No surprise really, but wait – why do these people keep sending spam? Because it is pretty much free and it works! That is the most frustrating aspect. If a spammer sends out one million ‘special emails’ and gets even a hundred people to respond and buy a $29.99 widget, that about $3,000! He no longer cares if 99.99% of his emails go into the trash.
The problem: people still get tricked.
The solution: don’t buy anything from anybody via an email solicitation. If you think the company is spamming don’t reward them by buying something. Remember even clicking on a link can sometimes give them referral income.
Phishing is another great “gift” you will receive via email. Basically a ‘phishing’ scam starts with a bogus email that looks and feel exactly like a real one. It claims to be from PayPal, Ebay, AOL, Bank of America or whoever and suggests that because of “new security requirements” or a “possible problem” you need to login and reset your password and account settings.
The catch is … when you click the link you go to a fake web page that looks exactly like the real thing. And … if you login you will have effectively just sent the bad guys your information. At this point you can say goodbye to your account access and any money associated with that account. The ‘phishers’ will drain your account and leave you stranded.
The problem: people still get tricked.
The solution: #1 – Never, ever click a link from an email – EVEN if it looks real. They can hide the real destination behind what looks like a correct website address. #2 – Google the subject of the email to see if it is a scam. And finally #3 – if in doubt, open a web browser and type the address of the real company directly into the address bar. Then login to your account to check on the status of everything. If you suddenly realize you have fallen for one of these scams be sure to login (on the real website) and change your password.
For your own exploring check out the following websites:
www.scamdex.com – The Email Scam Resource
www.antiphishing.org – Anti-Phishing Working Group
www.cloudmark.com – Check out the Safety Bar spam remover
With a little paranoia and caution we can all survive the bombardment from the ‘bad guys’.
-Doug DeVries
Equine-Design.com
doug@equine-design.com
Copyright © 2008 The NW Horse Source, LLC
Top of Page
|
