Babel Machine

Do you ever get those annoying emails trying to sell the latest video on crazy fetishes, invented in some country you’ve never heard of? Well if you have a good anti-spam program the answer is no. Anti-spam software not only protects you from outrageous emails, such as these fetishes videos, but it can prevent the more harmful emails, such phishing scams from reaching your inbox.

A phishing scam is very simply a way for the scammer to steal your personal information, such as driver’s license, bank details, passport and other things of this nature. They can use the information you give them to do unimaginable things. The good news is in no country is it legal and anyone caught phishing is usually prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Now as these scammers are coming up with new ways to get past the anti-spam programs and into your inbox, you should be aware you can fall into their trap at any given moment. To avoid becoming their next meal, have a read through these useful tips to help you steer clear of phishing scams.

Using Money Services on the Internet

No matter where you sign up on the internet to use services that touch your money, they give you a list of rules and regulations to read and agree to before you become a member.  If you actually bother to read them, which most people don’t, they tell you that they will never ask you for any personal information via email, such as passwords and bank account numbers. Some websites such as EBay and PayPal also warn you, on a regular basis, that some scammers may pose as their company and ask for your details through an email, but you should never respond as that is not their policy or the way they handle business. So no matter who asks you for your details through email, NEVER give them out.

Email Addresses

With scammers getting smarter these days they now buy websites with a very similar name to the site they are mimicking. For example a phishing scammer pretending to be from PayPal may buy a website like www.PayPaI.com (the L is replaced with a capital i) OR www.PayPall.com . With this website they also get email addresses that might be Admin@PayPaI.com OR J.Johnson@PayPall.com. You find that if you actually look at the email address it is different in some way to a real email from a real company. You can always just copy and paste it in notebook or something similar to see if things like L’s or capital o’s have been swapped with capital i’s or 0(zero)’s. The easiest thing to do is look at a real email from the company and if you don’t have one, go to their website and request an email in some way, through support or tell them you think you have a false email from them and they’ll go out of their way to help you. Of course if the scammer isn’t too bright and the email address is something like JBloggs@hotmail.com then he is just an idiot, but never the less, make sure you’re not fooled by this scamming idiot.

Spamming

A lot of the time these phishing jerks will send one email to many people at a time. They might do this by having a data base where all they do is enter your name and email address, along with the 50 other names and email addresses its being sent to. They collect your name and email from places like MySpace, Facebook and Bebo. Many times they don’t even care about names and just collect email addresses through forums where they are often freely given out. So when you receive a dodgy email prying for personal information, just check to see if you were the only recipient or if there were many. Chances are you were not the only recipient and it is a phishing scam.

Check the Internet

Remember that good old saying, ‘If it sounds too good to be true, it is!’ Well even in today’s world this is still the case. Any suspicious email I get now, I pick a few lines and then run it straight through several search engines to see if anyone else has had problems. I can almost guarantee if it is a scam someone has posted something about it somewhere. I received a few odd phishing scams several weeks back. One was from Microsoft claiming I won $1,000,000 for having a hotmail account and the other was from an exotic dancer that wanted to live with me providing I helped her get her $1,000,000 over to Australia and then set us up a place together. As tempting as the second one was, well a) the Mrs didn’t like it and b) it was clearly a scam. When I ran a few words like, $1,000,000 bullshit Microsoft through Google I had hundreds of results, all saying that it was a scam and of course the first link I clicked http://www.hoax-slayer.com/microsoft-lottery-scam.html gave me the answers I was looking for. So no matter how real the email seems, a simple Google search will see you deleting all those phishing scams that managed to navigate their way to your inbox.

The email is a phishing scam!

Believe it or not this is actually a good thing (providing you haven’t been scammed) as it means you can report it to the company that is being imitated. This allows these bigger companies like Microsoft and Banks, to take legal action against these scamming mongrels, often landing them a nice prison sentence. The first thing you should do is logon to the website that the scammer is posing as, then hit the contact us/support button and send them the exact email you were sent, with a brief outline of what has happened. Another thing I would suggest doing if you don’t receive an email back from this company is calling them. Remember it is you being scammed and you are helping out these big companies by reporting what they aren’t aware of. After all, reporting it helps you end up with your personal information in more secure databases. Scammers imitating these big companies are often the reason you see them change their logo and/or email templates on a periodical basis.

So whether you need to go and buy a new anti-spam filter/program for your email or get an ice cold glass of coca-cola, just be sure to remember phishing scams are out there and they can easily be prevented providing you keep these useful tips in mind. Make sure you pass these tips around to your friends and colleagues by linking them back to this page.

Tags: anti-spam, email, phishing, protection, scam