The Trickery of Spammers
Monday November 10, 2008
I get an e-mail, it's from MSN Featured something and it says something like this and I don't have their words: "If you don't want our regular notices then please click 'unsubscribe'." They were kind enough to think of me, so I thought. So I clicked "unsubscribe." And it took me to a "Canadian" (who knows if this is true) pharmacy. Ah, what trickery!
What about you? What can we do?
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Scot McKnight is a widely-recognized authority on the New Testament, early Christianity, and the historical Jesus. He is the Karl A. Olsson Professor in Religious Studies at North Park University (Chicago, Illinois). A popular and witty speaker, Dr. McKnight has given interviews on radios across the nation, has appeared on television, and is regularly asked to speak in local churches and educational events. Dr. McKnight obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Nottingham (1986). Click to continue reading Scot McKnight's Bio...
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Ah, Scot...welcome to my world! ;^)
Everyone has already said it, but let me just agree that you just delete e-mail from folks you don't know or that you didn't ask for.
The "hovering" trick is important...Cheryl, you rock!
And WoO...my husband is right there with you, after spending three days and 15 hours removing over 60 viruses and Trojans trying to turn my computer into an attach bot. YIKES! (Gotta respect Jael...)
Just as I was reading this I received an email address from my own email address with a dirty title. I started to worry that it was sent to everyone in my address book, but after some research I found out that it's a trick of spammers - they mask emails with the address of the recipient to beat spam filters.
Have you been selling our email address Scot? (joking).
I received a very authentic-looking email from Chase today, asking me to log onto their secure website to update some information...just click on the link to log in. The blue underlined hyperlink looked especially authentic:
http://chaseonline.chase.com/Secure/webform/OSL.aspx?LOB=3600.....
But when I held the cursor over the link, I could look at the actual url it would link to, as Cheryl instructed you to do. It was close, but not the same:
http://chaseonline.chase.[gobbletygook].cz/Secure/webform/OSL.aspx?LOB=3600...
The ".cz" in the url means that I would have been whisked away to a phony Chase website hosted in the Czech Republic, where they'd prompt me to enter my account name, password, and other personal information. I do some banking with Chase, and it was a very basic, convincing "phishing" email, but luckily I took the time to investigate it.
I guess the solution is to never, ever click on anything in an unsolicited email, especially from financial institutions!
I've been getting a similar "MSN Featured" email from numerous sources over the past few days -- all running through my school address. It's unusual that something like that would get through the Gmail spam filter -- let along numerous times. I finally just copied a phrase out of the email (there is some common wording) and set-up a filter in Gmail to send them all to trash. No problems since then.
On one hand it feels good to not be along in this situation. The past couple of days I've been getting around 20 of these type emails. Prior to that I'd say 2-3 a day. I like the idea Brad suggested; to copy a common phrase into your filter...I'll give this a try and hope it works.
Sorry Scot you're now in the spammers club. Membership dues can be sent to the phony address below...lol
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