Comments on: How To Recognize Gmail Scams And Phishing http://misconceptions.us/is-this-a-gmail-scam/ Thu, 02 Feb 2012 22:13:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: peterson http://misconceptions.us/is-this-a-gmail-scam/comment-page-1/#comment-1503 peterson Sun, 09 Oct 2011 21:18:35 +0000 http://misconceptions.us/?p=364#comment-1503 It starts with opening the email message. As soon as you open a message, you should begin noticing some things aren't quite right. Legitimate institutions that send out emails to their customers usually send them from an email address that’s associated with their web site. Phishers, that is, criminals who send out emails trying to capture your personal information will use any means necessary to get you to respond, and that includes marking email messages Urgent. All phishing emails have one thing in common: links that don’t lead where they appear to. One way to tell if what you see is really where you’ll end up is to place your pointer over the link. But don’t click it! A pop-up window should appear with the actual URL attached to the link. In phishing emails, this address rarely matches what’s displayed in the email! A very common tactic that phishers use is telling email recipients that ‘regular maintenance’ turned up an account error of some type. Don’t fall for this! Phishing is one of the most prevalent identity theft scams you’ll encounter on the web. It’s estimated that about 75 to 150 million phishing emails are sent out daily. It starts with opening the email message. As soon as you open a message, you should begin noticing some things aren’t quite right.

Legitimate institutions that send out emails to their customers usually send them from an email address that’s associated with their web site.

Phishers, that is, criminals who send out emails trying to capture your personal information will use any means necessary to get you to respond, and that includes marking email messages Urgent.

All phishing emails have one thing in common: links that don’t lead where they appear to.

One way to tell if what you see is really where you’ll end up is to place your pointer over the link.

But don’t click it!

A pop-up window should appear with the actual URL attached to the link.

In phishing emails, this address rarely matches what’s displayed in the email!

A very common tactic that phishers use is telling email recipients that ‘regular maintenance’ turned up an account error of some type.

Don’t fall for this!

Phishing is one of the most prevalent identity theft scams you’ll encounter on the web.

It’s estimated that about 75 to 150 million phishing emails are sent out daily.

]]> By: knopfman http://misconceptions.us/is-this-a-gmail-scam/comment-page-1/#comment-59 knopfman Fri, 07 Oct 2011 14:46:41 +0000 http://misconceptions.us/?p=364#comment-59 The first thing to do when you get an email that looks suspicious is to compare the senders reply email address with the address that the email came from and if they're radically different then the email is almost certainly a scam. Obvious examples would be: From: info@paypal.com in the from field and reply to: zeeuer123@hotmail.com Another example would be that you get an email from someone that you know asking you to financially help a friend that you've never heard of that lives in another country. If this happens simply email or call your friend and if they didn't send the email then the friend's email account has been hacked. And last but not least, you might be wondering if there are additional reasons why someone would go to all the trouble of hacking an email account. Well there are. Most people use the same password for all their accounts, so just imagine all the opportunities that that will provide. The hacker sees emails that you've received from your bank etc. and he will try to access it using the same password that he used to get into your email account. And all too often, "bingo" he's hit gold! The first thing to do when you get an email that looks suspicious is to compare the senders reply email address with the address that the email came from and if they’re radically different then the email is almost certainly a scam.

Obvious examples would be:

From: info@paypal.com in the from field and reply to: zeeuer123@hotmail.com

Another example would be that you get an email from someone that you know asking you to financially help a friend that you’ve never heard of that lives in another country. If this happens simply email or call your friend and if they didn’t send the email then the friend’s email account has been hacked.

And last but not least, you might be wondering if there are additional reasons why someone would go to all the trouble of hacking an email account.

Well there are.

Most people use the same password for all their accounts, so just imagine all the opportunities that that will provide. The hacker sees emails that you’ve received from your bank etc. and he will try to access it using the same password that he used to get into your email account.

And all too often, “bingo” he’s hit gold!

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