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When In Doubt, Don’t Click the Link

31 July 2008 By Saran

We are all aware of the various scams that are rampant over the web so don’t be surprised if you find them suddenly making their way to your mailbox. While it seems that being more aware of attachments and pictures in emails has been covered, email scammers are still on the go and they have made the whole process simpler. These days, they do it using simple links that are sent via email and one click alone can make a difference. A difference towards the worst that is.

URL direction to a certain site will always be dangerous. Especially if you find it suddenly stressed in your email, be cautious. For one thing, identify if you know the sender. If you don’t know them, don’t click on the links. Actually, if you don’t know the sender, then it would be best to delete the message and don’t bother reading it. For sure, you know to whom you have given your emails so you should know better.

They were all the rage last year, but image and file attachment spam is definitely out in 2008, as spammers abandon complex techniques for simpler URL-based methods.

Around 90 per cent of all spam messages are now URL based, according to a recent report from IBM’s Internet Security Systems (ISS) X-Force, Big Blue’s Internet threat research and development team.

Source

The best way to protect yourself from these scammers is to just be careful. Don’t click on links as if you are interested. Research a bit and look for scams. Or better yet, if you see bad English composition in the email coming from someone you don’t know, then consider it scam and spam.

Filed Under: IT Security Basics, Malware, Storage Tagged With: email, links, scammers, spam, url, urls

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