It is true there are some real sneaky scams online. It is the fear many of us as Boomers have when it comes to the internet. Nevertheless, we can protect ourselves.
This month’s issue of Consumer Reports gave a great overview of some common swindles and some prevention tips. I will share part of them today and another part later.
Do Our Homework!
It is harder to be taken advantage of if we do our homework. Consumer reports suggests the following:
- Always check out the license, reputation and references of any company or individual before we do business with them
- Give up the dream of GETTING SOMETHING FOR NOTHING.
- Trust our gut when something smells fishy.
2 Common Scams
- There is a problem with your bank account.
You may get a message by email saying there is a problem with your bank account. Often you are asked to give your online password to a phony email account or web site. Consumer Reports indicated that that one recent e-mail “security alert” claimed to be from Bank of America and directed online users to “reconfirm” their a count information by going to a fake Bank of America Web site and entering their online banking ID and password.
- “Help me move millions” unsolicited emails
Many of us have already gotten these emails. Now I notice they say catchy phrases in the address line like “God Bless you”. It is an opportunity to share in a percentage of millions of dollars that a supposedly government official is trying to transfer illegally out of a foreign country in return for bank account numbers or some other identifying information.
The best thing we could do is “Just Say NO! I also send the email to SPAM in my email service.
Many of us are just putting our toes in the water of doing things online. Now my grands want me to Blog? Ha! But it can we done with safety and security. We will just learn how to do it and keep our eyes open.
Source: Consumer Reports-September 2007
Pt. 2 will cover Identity Theft.
Do you have some online protection information you could share?
Rosie
Here’s a tip for online protection for your email address. Spam “robots” scour the internet with automated spiders used to collect publicly posted email addresses from websites around the world. To avoid having your email address end up on a “CDROM with 600 million email addresses for only $99.00!” just use this tip:
When posting your email address publicly use a format that cannot be easily parsed by an automated spider. Here are a few examples:
speaker(AT) digitaldefender.org
Speaker AT(removeme)digitaldefender.org
speaker(nospamallowed)AT digitaldefender.org
Note that I left out the “@” symbol. Thats because my email hosting company will forward mail to anyone@ mydomain.
If you do not subscribe to that type of forwarding service you can include the “@” sign safely. When the spider collects this address from a publicly posted location, it will not be a emailable address.
Hope this is helpful!
Mike “America’s Digital Defender” Lattimore
web: http://www.digitaldefender.org
email:speaker AT digitaldefender.org
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