Salon - - New spoof email I got

twinkissed · #1 11-17-2005, 12:29 PM

Just to be helpful I wanted to tell everyone about a new spoof email I got. I used to get ones from paypal saying my account had been suspended yada yada yada and they were fakes. I got about 10 in all. Now they are doing something different... to me anyways. I got one titled : Receipt of your payment and in subject (which is all html btw) it showed like a regular receipt that I had supposedly paid $368 to some company for some watch. It says that if you dispute the transaction to click on some link. I didn't do that... I just reported it to paypal and sure enough it was just someone with way too much time on their hands. I don't know how many here use paypal but incase this is new for you and you get one... now you know to not click in it. If anything check your account by typing in the homepage to there yourself.

CJ Swartz · #2 11-30-2005, 05:33 PM

Thanks for the warning -- every time I think I've caught on to how to identify these spoofs, I read something new. It can really help prevent someone from getting spoofed to read about someone else's experience.

twinkissed · #3 11-30-2005, 11:45 PM

Now I've gotten one from Ebay. Grrrrr. I found that by turning off my html in my emails helps me a lot because I get these emails and it doesn't show half of the letter because the fake part is html. Most of the times anyways. I just feel so bad for the people that fall for this. Like my grandmother. She has a hard enough time browsing the web, if she got this she would probably believe it

. That's why I constantly try to keep her up to date.

Gary Richardson · #4 12-01-2005, 01:23 AM

These are pretty much my guidelines for e-mail security.

1. Disable HTML, and set your client to plain text (you really don't need the snazzy format on most of your mail).

2. Never open attachments, even if they're from someone you know, unless it's something you're expecting from them.

4. Never click on any links that may be embedded in a message (not a problem if you don't have HTML switched on), type the URL into your address bar yourself if the mail purports to be from a site you regularly use.

5. Make sure you've got preview set in your toolbar, and ensure it's set to not download message when you click on preview.

6. Use Thunderbird rather than Outlook Express. It has better security, and a handy built in spam filter for those messages that get past your ISP's spam filter.