Indulge me on my soapbox for a moment but I'm sick and tired of spammers, spoofers, and virus spreaders who will go to any length to get you to open their mail. People tend to be trusting on computers... people except me. I'm not trusting of anything for the most part.
The latest ploy of these scumbags is to hide their message behind some subject line that seems legitimate, if not important, on the surface. Subject lines such as:
- Mail Delivery Failure (see attached) (virus)
- Subpoena (sales)
- Is it really you? (sales)
- Important message (sales)
- Update your Paypal Account (identity theft)
- About your Citibank account (identity theft)
- Re: your recent email (sales)
- Here's the information you requested (sales)
- Returned Mail: See transcript for details (virus)
- Urgent Message (sales)
- Your Computer is Infected, run attached file to clear (virus)
- I missed your call (sales)
- We've been trying to reach you (sales)
These are just a few examples of the literally hundreds of emails I receive weekly. Fortunately, I don't see many of them anymore thanks to an email service called Mailblocks. It uses a challenge/response approach to eliminate spam. You can learn more about this service if you like by going to my website, www.WriteDad.com and clicking on the Mailblocks banner. It immediately eliminated 90% or better of my spam.
Here are some do's and don'ts:
- Never reply with financial information regardless of how legitimate the email seems. Ebay, Paypal, Citibank, etc... are not going to ask for this information in an email.
- When you get spam that offers an opt-out link... or tells you to reply with unsubcribe... Ignore it. All you end up doing is verifying that your email address is valid, opening yourself up to more spam.
- Delete chain emails... PLEASE. You're not going to die in seven days if you ignore them nor will you get rich if you don't. Nine times out of ten the miracle story of the three year old who walked through a burning house to save his grandmother's cat escaping injury because someone saw an angel carrying them both to safety... is B.S. with capital letters. Sorry to bust your bubble of hope for mankind.
- Never open an attached file if you don't know who sent it and why. Especially be leary of executable files and zip files. There are just too many bastards out there with nothing better to do than to see how many computers they can screw up. Don't let one of them be yours.
The Internet and email are wonderful mediums for information and communication. We just have to weed out the losers who are determined to make the experience hell for the rest of us.
