Have you ever received an emails from UPS, FedEx or the IRS or even from a Bank asking you to logon and retype your information because they need to update their database. Or you need to click on a link to update your address because they can not deliver your package? Well that is called Phishing (pronounced “Fishing”) becuase that is exactly what the spammers are trying to do with you, they are fishing you to get your personal information or Credit Card Number.

This of course is a fraud technique used by online criminals to obtain your personal information, they can steal your financial information, identity, home address, phones, etc. It all depends on how much information you give them. Some others don’t even want information, the link just include an executable file that will infect your computer, just for fun. Yes as you heard it, just for fun because there is not really a goal or a reason behind it.

The purpose of course of these type of messages is to obtain some times the following information:

• Name or username of your account
• Address and Phone Number
• Passwords or Pin
• Bank Accounts
• Credit Card Numbers
• Social Security
• and more…

I won’t even explain what they can do with this information cause I think you know what they can do.

How Can you tell if the email is fake?

Sadly to say is very difficult sometimes, you just have to be smarter than them. The attacks are becoming more sophisticated and more difficult for an avarage person to tell if the message is fraudulent. For example many of the phising emails can include real address and even the company logo to make it look legit. Even the links look legit sometimes. But if you read my post Don’t get trick by Spam you should be able to identify at least most of them.

Oh! the SPAM, I whish you can eat them some times like the real SPAM at least you will get some satisfaction but  at the end they are all annoying and dangerous not to mention tricky and deceitful. I am talking about the emails that offers you stuff for free or to enlarge your life (if you know what I mean). Working on the IT field you learn every day something new and one of the things you learn is that they cannot be stopped, there is no magic software or firewall or filter that will know which email is real and which one is not. Since these type of emails change form and content is very difficult to catch them all. But I will try to help you at least to identify them and be smarter than them.

Spam, Phishing and Spoofing are different types of email, some contain viruses while others look they were sent by a friend. But I will discuss the meaning on a later time. Now let me help you identify the Spam.

1. Check the sender – Most of the spam emails have a weird address, some of them don’t even have an email address. Of course sometimes you have the Spoofing which uses your own email address. In this case I did blocked my email address but if you see, the email came From “myemail@novamomentum.net” To “myemail@novamomentum.net”