How to...
Scams Spam and a whole waste of time
More and more emails are being sent that claim to be from our banks, online e-commerce site or from Microsoft direct.
It is good practice to ignore all emails regarding these types of scams. If you belong to an online bank or have traded on an ecommerce site mentioned in these emails then go directly to that site by typing in the domain name on the address bar of your browser. NEVER EVER click a link in any email to take you to a secure domain, they could be bogus.
Most online trading companies and banks now have a fraud system in place and would like to hear from you if you have recieved a bogus email. Forward the email directly to their fraud department usually found on the help pages of their websites.
If you would like to know what you are about to click on in an email then right click instead and choose View Source. Notepad or other editor should open with the actual code contained in the email. Look for href= something. The something is where you will be taken to if you click the links.
If this is a sequence of numbers in the form n.n.n.n then this is not even showing a domain name but a direct network location.
Also some emails now link you to domains using hex codes such as %x77%x77%x77%x2e%x61%x62%x63%x2e%x63%x6f%x6d which is www.abc.com in text format.
Many of these scan emails contain a large graphic in the form of a really convincing email layout. Usually these can be discovered as no matter where you point to on the page it is clickable (the little finger appears rather than a text cursor).
If an email gives you a phone number to phone then before phoning it check out what the number relates to by either using the directory services or the easiest way is to type the phone number exactly into Google.com and see what comes up.
Be careful these numbers may be high rate or premium numbers, long distant or overseas numbers or just some poor business or service that has been targeted.
I did this recently with a bogus email asking me to phone 01280 456111 which when I looked it up on Google.com found it to be Cambridgeshire Police.
The best advice I can give is to treat ALL emails as scams or spams and delete the lot unless you recognise them.
If they ask for your security details, to re-instate credit card details, to delete files as they may be virussed, to pass this on to all your friends, to visit our website and re-register or phone this number now for more details etc etc. All scams or spams.
Qurb is a great spam killer. Try it now from Qurb
Happy Christmas and hope the spams and scams don't give you nightmares this Christmas.
David Radisic
