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Friday, July 23, 2010

5 Obvious phishing scams people fall for

I just got some spam while fishing for some ideas. So, here are my top 5 obvious phishing scams people fall for. I'm not talking you're Nigerian princes here. I talking about stuff people still fall for.

1. Anything from a bank.
Just because it looks like it's from your bank, and has an Internet address like it's from your bank does not mean it's from your bank. Any "urgent" email from you're bank should be followed up with a call to them. The problem is that these days is that, that is such a pain that most people don't call the bank and give up and give up all that info. Suck it up and press the pound key over and over. You'll get to them... eventually.

2. Anything that looks like its from your system admin or ISP. (AOL I am looking at you.)
This is the one that inspired me to do this article. I got an email saying I was nearing my memory limit on my email only to check it and find out I'm only at 20 percent of it. Earlier this year my Mom gave away a lot of her personal info to scammers that looked like they were from AOL. ( Hey, it's just a back up for if and when Comcast acts wonky.)

The Internet is the modern gateway to the world and somebody says, "Houston the net has a problem" and people go all panicky and do a bunch of stupid stuff. Again call these people before giving away info.

3. Any email you get more than once no matter how innocent it may seem.
You're getting that email because somehow you got on somebody's automated list of schmucks. Prove them wrong by not being one.

4. Any and I mean any website that asks for your email address especially ones that only ask for your email address.

Okay, these may not necessarily steal all you're money but they're almost definitely going sell your email address to someone who is going to steal all your money.

5. Nearly two-thirds of all google ads.
Just have the confidence that you are smarter than a 5th grader already.

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