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internet_security:phishing_detection

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Phishing Detection

Scam emails appear to come from every company such as Wells Fargo, Ebay, Facebook, CalTel, etc. The emails are often copies of real emails from that company. Also scam messages may come from people you know. Email accounts are taken over by spammers all the time and are then used to send spam to everyone in that person's contact list. This type of email is a “phishing” (pronounced “fishing”) email. It is a type of email scam.

If an email message you receive contains a link, you need to verify where the link goes. To do this, point at the link with your mouse, but do not click on it. At the bottom of your email program window, you will see the URL that you will go to if you do click on the link. If the URL at the bottom of the screen does not match the location of where the email says it is from, it could be a scam.


Notice how the advertised address (http://studyblog.zzl.org/gmail.html?5533) doesn't match the actual address (http://www.justactors.co.uk/gmail.html?1525). This can be an important clue that the message may be a scam. Please notice that neither one of these links match the From or Reply to address listed at the top of the email. This too is also evidence that the message may not be legitimate.

Modern email programs can detect this kind of behavior in emails and report that the message may be a scam. If you are using an old version of Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express, you do not have these features. If you need a free email program that has these features, we suggest Mozilla Thunderbird.

internet_security/phishing_detection.1365093227.txt.gz · Last modified: 2013/04/04 09:33 by esanders