Computers and Technology

Most of us are already well familiar with the frustrations of spam: unsolicited email ads. In recent years, unwanted emails have evolved in an attempt to avoid increasingly specialized filters and wary recipients. We have put together a list of red flags to help you quickly spot emails that may be harmful to your PC and your bank account.

Suspicious attachments

Attaching files to an email is a fast and easy way to share files with your friends and family. The downside is that crooked scammers can attach files such as viruses and spyware in the hopes that an unwary recipient might download the file and infect their computer. Any time you see an email with an attachment that you were not expecting, be cautious about opening the attachment or even reading the email.

Links that don’t make sense

In an email supposedly from Yahoo, a link to a specific page on Yahoo’s site appears. So why does the text of the link not begin with “http://yahoo.com”? Because it is a scam. Many scammers attempt to collect account information or even credit card numbers by posing as respectable websites looking for data about your account. These emails typically have a link to a page where you can reset your password, confirm your credit card data, or log in to access some exclusive new feature. To spot these harmful links, you simply need to look at the url: the address of the page that is being linked to. All urls begin with “http://” or “htpps://” and from there vary from website to website. If the url isn’t visible in the link, you can hover your mouse over the link and the url will be displayed in the lower left corner of your web browser.

Notifications about accounts you don’t have

Malicious emails that disguise themselves as emails from major websites are counting on their recipients actually having accounts with that website in the first place. If you get an email about your facebook account when you never even signed up with facebook, chances are very good that this is a scam or virus email.

Password reset requests you didn’t send

One of the most common email scams presently is the phony password reset. These emails claim that you recently requested a new password, and direct you to a webpage where you can enter your “old” account name and password. You may be able to spot these emails by the link urls or because you don’t have the account that you would ly be resetting the password for in the first place. Even if you don’t see anything worrying with the link or the account data, never respond to a password reset email that you didn’t specifically request.

Sender addresses that don’t add up

An official email from YouTube.com will be sent from an email address that ends with @youtube.com. If “vanessa1997@aol.com” is sending you official updates about your YouTube account, it’s a safe bet this is also a malicious email. If your email system does not display sender data, you can change your settings to show full headers or just click a link right in the email to show all of the sender data.

Money transfer schemes

Typically from Nigerian royalty, these emails claim that there is some tremendous amount of money sitting in an account somewhere that the sender wants moved to the US before something terrible happens to it. It’s not uncommon for these emails to be all in caps lock and poor English, although there are exceptions. These emails are scam attempts, attempting to get your bank account information so that the sender can access your funds. No matter the story for the email, you shouldn’t ever share bank account information with anyone you don’t know. Newer varieties of these emails claim to be from “a member of your church.”

Suspect emails from co-workers

The most dangerous and hard to spot malicious emails are the ones sent by your friends and other contacts. Usually if you receive a suspicious email from a friend or other contact, it is either because their PC has been infected by a virus or because their email account has been compromised. If you see an email from one of your contacts that has strange characters in the subject, has attachments that you were{n’t not} expecting, links to a file sharing site, or otherwise looks different from the emails you’re used to from that person, take the time to contact them before clicking on any links or downloading any attachments.

Emails from yourself

These types of emails can be very disturbing when you find them. If you find an email from your own account waiting in your inbox that you know you didn’t send (and you have not allowed anyone else access to your account) immediately change your password and security question for your account. After that, check out your “sent mail” folder to find out if any other emails went out that you were unaware of. Let everyone who received one of these suspicious emails know that you didn’t send the emails, that they shouldn’t open them or open any links or attachments and that you think  your account was compromised. You can also let your email provider know about your worries. If this problem comes back, your machine may be infected and require virus cleanup service performed.

As users and automatic filters become more aware of these malicious emails, scammers will develop new ploys to get at your computer, bank account, and other data. The best weapon against these attacks is a healthy dose of skepticism, though even vigilant users can fall victim to scams and viruses. If you believe you may have a compromised email account or infected  machine, or if you just want more information about how to avoid these problems, give Geek Choice a call any time at 1-800-GEEK-HELP (433-5435). We can help you with Virus Removal, Spyware Removal and general computer repair.

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Brought to you by discount HP laptops. Almost anyone with a passing acquaintance with the Internet is familiar with spam. Just as junk mail is the demon of the Postal Service, spam is the scourge of e-mail.

Spam is unsolicited e-mail – often with some alleged commercial purpose, but almost always unwelcome. It’s sent in bulk by automated programs to millions of e-mail addresses, usually offering products and services such as prescription medicines, get-rich-quick schemes and pornography.

As much as the objectionable content, it’s the method of sending spam that upsets most people. Unlike junk (snail) mail that’s delivered by the Postal Service at the expense of the sender, the cost of sending spam lies almost entirely on the receiver and the transmitters. There is a cost to the sender, when they use paid services to distribute, but the charge is often minimal.

So, why is spam so hated? After all, it can be eliminated with a simple delete. While receiving one or two unwanted e-mails a day is a minor inconvenience, when the number rises to 10, 20, or a hundred per day it becomes a major problem.

Before e-mail became an accepted means of communication, spam was mostly limited to USENET – newsgroups established to discuss specific topics. As it advanced, mechanisms for cross-posting – sending one message across multiple groups – came widely into use.

The ability to cross-post was, regrettably, quickly exploited by spammers. The same message could be sent to thousands of newsgroups with no regard for their actual interests.

With the rise in popularity of e-mail, spammers gained a whole new arena in which to inflict harm. They use software (spambots) to collect e-mail addresses posted on web sites or newsgroups, and send out their unwanted messages to millions of recipients at once.

Spambots are programs used to harvest e-mails for subsequent compiling into lists in order to – you guessed it – spam large groups of individuals in one easy and ill-bred way.

The sheer number of messages sent makes spam profitable. This is known as ’shotgun’ advertising – when it’s advertising at all and not a scam. Most reputable advertisers use ‘targeted’ marketing, which involves soliciting e-mail addresses voluntarily – or at least attempting to analyze the recipient – to send only messages that are likely to be welcomed.

Most people won’t fall for get-rich-quick schemes or be interested in random merchandise solicitations, but if even one recipient out of a million provides his or her credit card number, the spammer’s efforts can be amply repaid.

But don’t despair. Spam is being fought on several fronts simultaneously. Companies and trade groups, legislation and technology are combining forces to make spam a thing of the past.

The effort may never be 100% effective since one man’s spam is sometimes another’s welcomed offer for a hotly sought item. But large strides are being made in all three areas.

In the interim, an individual needn’t wait passively for others to solve the problem. We look at some tips on how to reduce spam and hinder spambots in later articles.

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Brought to you by laptop computer coupons. Fighting spam – like countering any illegitimate activity – is a never-ending battle. You devise a strategy and there’s a counter-response. But taking low-effort steps that make spammers actions ineffective or difficult puts you at an advantage.

FIGHTING FIRE WITH FIRE

If a spammer had to gather e-mail addresses manually and send ads one at a time, the whole enterprise wouldn’t be worth his effort. Unfortunately, automation gives him a huge assist.

Two can play at that game.

Since spam is made possible by programs, programs can fight it – and, fortunately, there are many already available. Before learning how to use them, it’s helpful to know how spammers do their dirty deeds and what simple actions a user can take to counter them.

One of the most effective tools spammers have are spambots – programs that automatically browses websites looking for e-mail addresses, which it then “harvests” and stores into large lists. The lists are then either used directly for marketing purposes or sold, often as CDs listing millions of addresses.

There aren’t yet perfect mechanisms for foiling spambots, but there are several effective techniques.

MISDIRECT

If you don’t expose an e-mail address to harvest, you can’t get harvested. But in a time when blogs, forums and other public sites are heavily used – and most require providing an e-mail address to post if not to read – it’s difficult to avoid.

So for those public venues, define and use an address where you intend to get no personal e-mail. After responding to the sign-up confirmation you don’t have to care what goes there. Keep another for personal use and give it only to trusted individuals and vendors.

A word of caution: Hotmail, Yahoo and other large providers have often been used for this purpose. Some sites are wise to this and won’t allow addresses with @hotmail.com, for example. Fortunately, there are dozens of free e-mail providers and you don’t have to use the same one every time.

CAMOUFLAGE

Spambots are clever, but they’re not human. They can’t make subtle distinctions or inferences unless they’re programmed to do so. Often, disguising a publicly visible e-mail address is enough to cause the spambot to bypass you. They’re frequently programmed to look for character strings like John_Example@somecleverdomainname.com. Programs only do what they’re instructed, so even so simple a change as John_Example_at_NOSPAMsomecleverdomainname.com is enough to fool them.

Even if your disguised e-mail address is still harvested, at minimum the address has to be ’scrubbed’ in order to be used. Scrubbing routines are even harder to write than spambots, because there are so many possible variations. (NO_SPAM, NOSPAM, no*spam and many that are much more clever. Be creative!) Those variations are usually simple for humans to decipher, but again programs only do what they’re instructed.

The method does have potential drawbacks. Humans have to strip out the extra letters and insert the @-sign (in the above example) – something they sometimes fail to do out of failure to understand the need to, or because they simply hit Reply To. Also, since many e-mail confirmation systems are themselves automated (by software, naturally), they too will fail to deliver to the desired address.

A variation on the technique can be used not only by web site designers but (to an extent) users. You can usually configure your e-mail account to make the receiver see your e-mail address as anything you wish, regardless of the actual address. After all, that’s how spammers often disguise themselves, too.

FILTERS

Once you make the effort to create an e-mail account and ‘advertise’ it to your friends, business associates and trusted vendors changing (or even disguising) it can be undesirable. That puts you in the position of making high cost efforts for low reward – exactly the role you want the spammer to be in, not you.

Spam or Junk Mail filters to the rescue.

Filters examine every e-mail before it’s delivered and apply complex algorithms to determine whether one is junk or not. They’re configurable so that e-mail from senders listed in your address book pass through to your Inbox, with others directed to a Junk folder.

Though imperfect, those algorithms are reviewed often by e-mail providers and evolve to capture more junk and fewer valid messages. And, when reviewing the junk mail folder, some allow you to specify whether they ‘guessed’ correctly. Your answers allow the algorithms to make better guesses.

RAISE THE PRICE

Eventually, even determined spammers get tired of programming variations to bypass the hurdles thrown in their way, deciding the effort isn’t worth the reward. The trick is to make the cost of their effort much higher than the reward, while making the cost to you low and the reward high.

Spammers haven’t surrendered, but progress to date has been impressive.

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Brought to you by affordable previously owned Vaio laptops. Along with spam advertisements hawking prescription medicines, ‘cheap’ mortgage rates and online gambling sites, there are a number of common scams whose sole goal is to separate you from your money.

One well-known example, circulating for years now, is the Nigerian bank scam. The sender, allegedly the wife or relative of a former dictator or government official (usually in Nigeria, hence the name) tells the sad story of how millions were deposited in a bank account which is no longer accessible. In exchange for your help, they’re willing to share this wealth – for a few mere thousands from your bank account for ‘expenses’. As ludicrous as it seems, people fall for this every year. In one well-publicized case an elderly Czech man who had lost his life savings to this scam shot the Nigerian consul in Prague.

Some Internet scams offer investment opportunities with huge paybacks. They usually claim to be risk-free, but once they have your money, you’re very unlikely to see any return. Another common scam involves offering credit cards for those with bad credit ratings – just send a Security deposit and processing fees. In return you get – that’s right – nothing. And by the time you start to investigate, the scam artist has disappeared.

Then there are the multilevel marketing schemes (MLMs), urging you to buy large quantities of the ‘latest new product’ – which you can resell for an easy profit while receiving a commission on each sale from the greater fool down the line. Once you’ve bought the merchandise, however, the distributor will have disappeared – sometimes without even sending the goods.

Remember these offers are worse than even ordinary spam. Legitimate businesses do not promote their products by spamming. They e-mail selected groups, generally those who have purchased from them before or voluntarily offered an e-mail address. Other offers should usually be ignored. Simply hit your delete button. However, even highlighting the e-mail in order to delete it can signal a spammer that you received one. To fight that, see the article ‘Fighting Spam’ in this series.

Never reply to spam. Doing so simply indicates to the spammer that your e-mail address is valid, and you’ll receive more spam than before. Some spam contains a message offering to remove your e-mail address from their mailing list. Don’t use even this service – it’s nothing but another method for verifying e-mail addresses.

Above all, never give your credit card number, bank account details or private data to anyone unknown over the Internet.  PayPal, for example, and other legitimate online businesses will never ask for your password in an email. One common scam is to fake return addresses and tailor subject lines and content so the message appears to be from them or another financial institution ‘confirming’ your information. Don’t fall for them.

How do you know whether it’s spam? Since, one man’s spam is sometimes another’s welcomed advertisement, there’s no perfect answer. But there is one good rule of thumb: if you don’t recognize the sender, it’s probably not someone you want to hear from. After all, how many former dictators in Nigeria are you likely to know?

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