« Article on self-defense and CCW laws | Main | Closer look at AZ "Castle Doctrine" bill »
Heads up on more scam spams
I've got my email on several webpages, so I tend to receive scam emails early in the process. The ones that say your account is being terminated, suspended, or needs info refreshed, look utterly genuine down to the images, and have a link to click on (which actually doesn't take you to that link at all), where they wlll grab your account data, credit card data, you name it.
I get several fake Paypals a week, at least one fake Ebay, have gotten so many for Chase Bank (where I've never banked) that I put it on spam blocker, and still some get through. Got one for Wells Fargo the other day.
Today came a first -- a scam spam for Amazon.com.
There are indications the scammers are getting fancy, hiding folders on other people's webpages. I assume the folder either stores the data for their retrieval, or redirects the data.
UPDATE: yep, you can hover the mouse over the link, or check the source code. But sometimes they get fancy and you have to look close. The link may be to something like "paypal.uk" or "pavpal.com" or "login_paypal.com"
4 Comments | Leave a comment
When you hover your mouse over the "click here" link in those emails, remember to check the Status Bar of your browser (at the bottom) which will tell you whether you're going to be whisked away to https://login.chasebank.com or http://206.34.54.82/gimme-all-your-money.
I always use 'Right-Click' / Details / Show message source to check out suspicious emails.
I'm like you. I've never taken great pains to hide my email address.
I have my ISP spam filter set to maximum and I have junk filtering turned on in outlook and I still get 5 to 10 spams a day. I can't imagine what it would be like without the spam filtering.
Fortunately, they are fairly easy to spot and I delete them without even reading them.
If I ever DO need to update my bank info, I'm afraid my accounts will get suspended because I delete those messages out of hand.
Dear Customer,
"We lost your username and password. Please give us your username and password so we can protect your money better."
We were born at night but we weren't born last night. Thanks for the heads up, Dave.