IT Security Blog

Be Wary of Giving out Your Email Address

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Emails are supposed to make life easier but sometimes, it may be wise to choose who you give out your email to. Today, a lot of mischief can be done and normally this comes in forms of email attacks or email bombs. In such scenarios, don’t be surprised if you find your email downloading hundred to a thousand emails in one sitting. That is not the best part. You would be lucky if this was done only once since others would schedule it daily.

Why do they do it? One is for trials of these foolish software and the other can perhaps be for malicious reason. It is a fact that while many people on the web cannot be harmed physically, they can create headaches for you in the form of discomforts from the privileges you get from the web. One of the main elements an online user would need to use is his email and by doing these email attacks, it burdens the person on how to get important information usually sent through the web.

One cannot avoid such instances. But the best way to prevent it is to choose the people you give it too. For people you meet on the web, it would be wise to use free mail accounts from Gmail or Yahoo over your personal one. Avoid the troubles of such since it will not only be a discomfort, but a forgettable experience as well.

A Few Tips to Avoid Phishing

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phishing example Chances are that when you open your inbox today you’ll find an e-mail claiming to be from your bank, an e-commerce site, or another online site you’ve visited. They might offer you an upgrade to your account, inform you that there’s been changes to their, and asks you to verify your account information. This could be a phishing attempt to get sensitive information like your personal information or passwords. Fortunately, you can avoid getting scammed by taking these precautions:

  • Be suspicious of any email with urgent requests for personal financial information. Phishers are getting more sophisticated in their attempts, so even if an e-mail appears to be legitimate, look for proof that it came from your e-commerce company. They should be personalized and carry information that only you and your company would know. They might show partial account numbers or other verification tools.
  • Use anti-virus software and a firewall, and keep them up to date. Phishers sometimes include script that can track your activities on the internet without your knowledge.
  • Never use the links in an e-mail to go to any webpage. Phishers will redirect you to a bogus site to trick you into logging in your account number and password. Log onto the website by typing in the web address to your browser. At the same time, never call any numbers in the e-mail. It could lead you to a VoIP provider that isn’t connected to your company at all.
  • Never fill out forms in e-mail messages asking for your personal financial information. Your e-commerce company would never ask you to send sensitive information in that manner.
  • Check your bank, credit, and debit card statements regularly to see if all your transactions are legitimate. Report any suspicious withdrawals immediately.
  • Finally, report the phishing attempt you received to your company and other anti-phishing groups.

[tags]phishing,spam,spoof emails,indentity theft,pharming,spam filtering[/tags]

Phishing for Personal Information

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Phishing over the web can be typified with that of trying to get personal information for mischievous use. Receiving unsolicited emails coming from unknown origins which would make you believe that you have won something in a lottery or a sweepstakes contest are the common forms of phishing.

Gone Phishing

The people who send you these emails are merely after your personal information. They would get information such as credit card numbers, bank accounts, and other useful information to which they can use over the web, an open space of being able to transact with a lot of security breaches that most people know today.

Some would even provide links to certain pages which are professionally done, all the more deceiving a person that the offer is for real. But the next time you get such e-mails from an unknown source, all you have to do is just think about it for a second. How can you get such mails from someone or something that you don’t even remember joining? The rest is history.

Avoid Twitter Spam

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twitterI have become more active on Tweeter in the past months, mainly due to a self-imposed Facebook hiatus. I just found Facebook to be so tiresome and irritating (not just the platform but the people using it). I have had my Twitter account for many years now but I rarely use it. Now that I have been using it a lot, though, I realized that it is NOT exempt from spam.

What am I talking about?

Direct message spam. This is one of the most common things I get. I receive DMs from people I don’t know.

Retweets. I love how you can retweet messages on Twitter but sometimes, they just clutter up my timelines! What’s even worse is that I am not even interested in what some people retweet.

Tweets from those I follow. Yep, they can inundate my timeline as well.

The bottom line here is to KNOW who you follow and who follows you. Every single day, I get “follow” e-mails and many times, I have no idea who they are. Now I know better than to follow people I don’t really know. Once, I even got a “The Real Carrie Underwood is now following you” e-mail. Guess what? It wasn’t the real Carrie Underwood.

More so, disable the autofollow feature. This doesn’t make sense as you get all sorts of followers trying to fish for their own followers. Again, filter those you follow.

Another thing you can do is go to this link: http://twitter.com/spam. They have some practical and useful tips that can help you address Twitter spam issues.

When In Doubt, Don’t Click the Link

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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.

Voicemail Spam on Your Mobile – Coming Soon

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Came across the incident on InfoWorld and it seems quite interesting for it involves spam messages on your mobile. That might seem a long way from the world of IT but as more and more of us turn to the mobile workforce that may present a big problem that can rival spam in your email inbox. The incident has a user from a certain location who moves to a different location that didn’t have the best of service availability when it came to his mobile carrier. He was contacted by AT&T and was informed that due to some technical constraints that cannot guarantee their full range of services. So in the end he was forced to sign up with an alternate mobile provider (Sprint) from which he began receiving marketing mail and text messages that were on the same level as phishing scams out for your personal information.
Unsolicited marketing is banned (which led to the downfall of most off-site call centers) in the US and almost anywhere else if I got it right, so why does a leading provider allow such things to happen? Well, the marketing industry for one is one of the most aggressive when it comes to the utilization of new technologies to further their reach and mobile phones being almost part of everyday life (except for some far reaches of the Amazon or Africa) it is a ripe and well established area to focus on for marketing drives.
Communications is the key and mobile workforces being very dependent on it makes them prime targets as prey for such marketing drives. The poor fellow isn’t alone for millions of us do get unsolicited voice mail or text messages from time to time (some more than others) and there should be something done to correct such menacing and disrupting activities.

Source : InfoWorld