Email
spam and scams are commonplace in this modern world that we live in. So common
place in fact that in today's world it is more uncommon for someone to have
never seen one of these scams then it is for someone who has seen them. Nearly
all of them either seem very harmless on the surface (you've won something,
chain letters, or even promises of huge savings are all perfect examples).
Today's blog is going to first divulge into some common email and phone scams
and the threat that they can cause you. From there I'll discuss a few tools
that could help you should you come across any of these scenarios and finally
I'll end with telling you about a situation where someone very close to me
almost fell into one of these traps.
Social
Engineering is a form of scamming that preys on the vulnerabilities of the
human mind. People by nature are weak to certain triggers, especially in realms
that they have little understanding of. Tell someone that their computer has a
virus, and they panic. By and large people do not understand what a virus looks
like on their computer, only that it’s bad. So you tell them they have one and
they are that much likely to give up whatever information they have to make the
problem disappear. Even if the problem never existed in the first place.
There
are many types of scams that exist in the wide web today. As we quickly as we
learn to recognize one type another grander, more clever, smarter scheme is
being cooked up to replace it. However smart we are, they are smarter. However if
you learn to recognize patterns, you should be able to protect yourself from
these nefarious people who are out to do you harm.
The
above website lists some of the most common internet scams you could come
across. As well as some ways in which you can avoid falling into these well-known
traps.
The
Foreign Lottery Scam
This
is one of the most common forms of scam. People live their entire lives waiting
for something good to happen to them. This preys on that mentality of people.
By telling them they are super lucky and won something you prey on hope and
joy. People then give you the information you want under the guise that you are
giving them the information to send you money. You play right into their
hands.
Chain
Letters
These
may seem like more of an annoyance then anything but I feel like they are worth
noting here. "Send this to _ many friends and something wonderful will
happen.” We've all see them at least once in our lives. On the surface they
seem fairly harmless. A silly little game to play among friends. In truth
however every time you forward one of these emails you put every person
you email at risk of being added to a large Email group, that can then be sold
to other companies and the spam continues in droves. Only once and you head
down the rabbit hole.
Bank
Breech Confirmation
Another
very common scam, again preying on the weakness of the human mind. Your bank,
the place where you keep your money, has been breached. They need you to
sign into your bank in order to validate your credentials and secure your
information. They even provide a link to your bank site. Except the bank site
is a fake and you've just given them all your bank information.
There are many other types of phishing scams that pray on the
unsuspecting and the seemingly weak. I could go into many more examples but I
think that it could take me an entire day to do so. However the following
couple of sites have a myriad of other examples for your information purposes.
So, you now know how to field out a few of the email scams
that are floating around today. That’s great. But what about the hundreds of
other scams you don’t know about? How do you arm yourself against those? Can
you arm yourself against those? Sure you can! I’m going to talk about a few
steps and tricks that you can look at while you evaluate whether that email is
real or trying to scam you.
1)
Your first line of defense is actually your
simplest. Use your own common sense. If something seems too good to be true,
nine times out of ten it probably is. If something seems like it is crazy
overstated, don’t trust it. Verify by your own means. Human beings are equipped
with a miraculous sense to not trust something that isn’t true. Survival. Use
that to your advantage.
2)
Look at the sender of the email. Does it come
from an individual? Does the email domain seem overly generic (such as Gmail,
or yahoo?). Companies will rarely send you an email from an individual person.
Companies also often have their own domain for their emails. Look for an email
that ‘looks’ official.
3)
Be wary of links in emails. If you hover over a
link you can see the true path that link is headed to? Does that new pathway
seem legitimate? You can never truly be 100% sure that a link is really what
you want, but the link should start with the place that you are headed. Ex
amazon.com can have other pathways after this, but it should not be
secure.amazon.com. The only way to 100% guarantee that you are going to the
right place is to type the address yourself into your browser.
Another few resources to keep in mind are snopes.com and
hoaxbuster.cciac.org which allows you to look up emails to find out if they are
on a list of well-known hoaxes and scams. You can also forward the email to spam@uce.gov, which will not
allow you to prevent the emails from coming in, but will allow the (blank) to
get a better grasp on the scams that are out there.
I’m going to leave you with a personal story from my life.
One scam, the scam about someone being stuck in Nigeria, hit very near to me
once. I have a cousin, his name is Ryan, and generally we don’t speak about him
much. He is pretty much the scum of the bottom, cocaine addict, has three
children, all different mothers, he abandoned his wife and all of his kids.
Fell off the grid. I don’t tell you any of this for revenge or sympathy, it’s
important to this story because he is the very kind of person who would go over
to Nigeria, strike up some shady deal, and get stuck there.
So when my grandmother, the only person in my family who
still would give Ryan the time of day, got a phone call saying that Ryan (yes,
they got that specific) was stuck in Nigeria and needed money to get home. She
fell for it, and hard. She went to everyone she could to get help as well
(thankfully, because we were able to get her to rationalize things and go to
the police rather than sending money blindly). Ours is a story that could have
gone very sour very fast.
They prey on this, giving you directed information, very
specific to you. They do their research. Always verify with an outside source
anything that requires you to give information about yourself or your bank
account. Remember guys, use common sense, be smart, and you’ll be just fine!
