Emails to watch out for!

We’ve mentioned this subject in the past, but it’s always worth revisiting for those who missed it the last time round.

For many people, spam emails stand out a mile away, which is why the things are getting more and more sophisticated. While still seen in circulation, we all take no notice now of the obvious spam from someone in Africa who has $16 Million and they want your help to get out of the country. However, these have been replaced by other new variants which can carry a nasty sting.

  • Missed Delivery: we all know courier companies leave a card through the door when they miss you at home. So it is safe to ignore the email from a courier company asking you to complete the attached form to rebook the delivery. Not least when you consider the attachment will deposit something nasty on your computer.
  • Invoice or Receipt for goods: you know what you have bought and you know where you bought it from, so the miscellaneous attachment for a purchase you cannot remember is definitely best left unopened, especially as it WILL give you a horrid problem.
  • Remittence Advice: more likely seen by business customers (and certainly very appealing to them!), these tempt you to open the attached file to see how much you have been paid. Once again, you should not be opening these unless you are confident of the source.

The common theme with the above emails is that they have a file attached. There are then the emails from friends and acquaintances with (often) unusual phrases and a link to a website. It might well be an obvious spam email, but if you want to let them know they need to update their password, then please use a NEW email to advise them and do not reply to the one sent to you.

Final one to mention which is doing the rounds again is the message from a friend to say they are stuck somewhere on holiday and need money to pay for a hotel bill. Now the question you might ask is, how is this risky? Well, what has happened is that your friend’s account has been hacked and used to send you this message. The hacker has then added an email forward from your friend’s account to an account the hacker has set up. This means that any message your friend gets, so does the hacker! So if someone does reply, in good faith, to offer money to help the stranded friend, then it is actually the hacker they will be liaising with and, ultimately, sending money to them and not their friend!