Thursday, February 26, 2015
The Evil Gets Smarter
Last week I talked about how the PayPal thieves try to get your information. Take a look at this one. It's a message from FedEx telling me there was a problem delivering my package.
Now think it through-- these bad guys are trying to get us to click on things-- because that's how they get us with viruses and coding to grab our information.
That's the key here CLICK ON THINGS.
So I want you to heighten your own homeland security for a minute here and ask yourself this DO I NEED TO CLICK ON THIS each and everytime someone sends you something.
What's more-- it can come from a friend too-- because their email gets compromised. The suspicion to look for in that case is does it SOUND like the person you know writing to you.
A few years ago I had a friend traveling in the Mideast. She was traveling alone teaching. I hadn't heard from her in a while and got an email saying she was in trouble and needed $2,000 wired to her right away and that she would explain it when she got back.
The message came from her regular email (which was either Yahoo or Gmail). I was ready to send the money-- but instead I took the risk that if she was able to email me this once, she would be able to email me again-- so I contacted her-- NOT WITH REPLY, but closing this email and composing another.
Sure enough, her email had been hacked.
But back to the FedEx-- this looks moderately real and after all how often do we look closely at such an email.
Now I do 90% of all shopping online.
Why? Because I hate shopping.
So a missed package is a concern to me. They almost had me.
Lucky for me I run a program on my Mac called Sophos that alerts me when something doesn't look right and it stopped me from clicking the attachment.
A quick google search of FEDEX PARCEL DELIVERY EMAIL brought up countless links of people who WERE taken by this scam.
So don't let these horrible people get you-- be careful my friends!