Revisiting Identity Theft Email Fraud - 101
Posted by Karim Dharamshi on Thu, Apr 01, 2010
Daily, even hourly, we hear about email fraud; perpetrators who use sophisticated software (malware) to track every single one of your movements on your computer- including passwords. Scary stuff, and definitely an area in which we are still complacent. How do we inexplicably click on a link we know we shouldn’t? Or what about that tempting email in our spam folders which looks so legit? Remember, it arrived in your spam folder for a reason. Delete. Delete. Delete. We all have received the emails from Nigeria begging for money on b
ehalf of a kidnapped aristocrat in destitute circumstances- or so they say. Those are almost passé now given the massive growth of Social Media along with the cyber pharma industry. Interestingly, I received an email this week from Facebook about resetting my password. NOTE: I do not have a Facebook account. Many “experts” believe the next great frontier of crime will be through Social Media sites. Users openly share personal information, such as stating when they will be away from their homes and for how long. Users become so immersed within these sites that they do not even realize they are exposing themselves to potential mischief. Moreover, your email accounts are directly linked to these sites. One can read daily the countless attacks on popular sites such as Facebook and Twitter. These are wonderful sites which do have a purpose, but it is time to be more vigilant.
Some basic ways to protect yourself against email fraud are:
- Do not open any attachment if you do not know the sender
- If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is
- Do not engage in transactions from unsolicited emails
- You did not win 20 million dollars by not entering a lottery
- No bank or social media site is going to ask you to re-set your password; this is a prototypical phishing attack
This may all seem like common sense but as our lives become more immersed with passwords and the technologies that come with them, a little re-enforcement can go a long way.