Part One - "Security Issues"

Recently i am receiving 3-4 scammy emails every day. They tend to become more and more and looks like soon will be bigger problem than the scam mail. Even now, they are worse, because should you believe them, you may loose a lot, really a lot of money and get into all other kind of troubles.
There are several different categories of scam mail an we will discuss them in the following issues.
I will try to help you protect yourself of faling in the hands of the net-gangsters.

Let us first see the newest and growing very fast family of "Security Issues" emails. Here fall fake e-gold emails, "paypal" security warnings, e-bay and different warning emails from "banks".

In 99% of the cases those letters state that there is a security problem with your account and it will be terminated if you don't perform a certain action. This could be very frustrating - we all know how picky are the payment processors and that they really suspend accounts. So we need to be sure that we don't get scammed, at the same time that our accounts won't be suspended or hacked.

How to recognize them and protect?

1. Always look at the email headers. They will show you a lot of info. Each email program or web based email has an option "View full headers", "Show email headers etc.". Look at the: Return path, Received: from IP address, Source-Dir if available. For example a fake e-gold warning was sent to me with this:

Return-path:
Received: from [70.84.105.244]

Obviously this do not come from e-gold. If you only see the IP in Received: from you can compare it to the IP address of the site, which should be the sender by pinging in MS DOS prompt (type: ping e-gold.com for example).

2. Some emails ask you to send your username or password claiming that it might be lost or something like that. Do not believe and do not send anything! There is no chance that any serious service will ask you for that!

3. The scammers are smarter recently. Instead of asking you to send your login info, they ask you to go to the site and update your account details. They provide a link where to click to go to the site. Be careful: those links may look like e-gold.com or paypal.com, but they may lead to a different website! Such well known site is for example e-qold.com (note "q" instead of "g"). It can be e-go1d.com, paypa1.com or whatever similar looking. Just avoid clicking on the links! If you are unable to determine if the mail is scam or not, you can directly type the site address or use your bookmarks and update your details. Thus you will be secure that you have done what had been asked from you, but on the right site!

4. Some "security issue" warnings claim that they are sending you a security update which you should install on your PC to avoid hacking your account. Never download those attacments. They are keyloggers, trojans or other viruses. None of the payment processors will ever broadcast emails with attachment. If you feel unsure just visit the site of the processor and check the news - if they wanted you to download and install something, they would make it available on the site!

5. Should you feel something fishy, you can try answering the mail and asking for more info. In 90% of the cases the email will be returned to you, because the sender's address is fake. You can go on and try contacting the service about this email. Only after receiving a responce you can be sure for the source of the mail.

Be careful and protect yourself!

About the Author

Tony Clifton is the Editor in Chief of High Yield Weekly Digest