Email Scams

Recently, we've been seeing a new kind of really nasty email circulating the internet. If you're not careful with this kind of email, you could be jeopardizing your security by revealing a whole bunch of very personal information.

This is just about the nastiest thing that thieves and scammers have put through email. This e-mail's function is to fool you into revealing information like credit card number, bank account info, and access information to certain websites.

What makes this one so easy to fall for is that it looks completely official. This email will appear to be direct from whatever company they are trying to fool you into revealing your personal information about. The logo will be there. There might even be links along the bottom that make it look completely official. Somewhere on this email will be a link that will take you to a web page that will request a lot of personal information.

Recently we've seen emails that appear to come from eBay, two banks, and PayPal. These emails want you to verify information to do with your accounts on these systems. The website that you are supposed to enter your information into will look exactly like the website that this email purports to come from. It will ask you security information like your account name and password and perhaps even credit card information.

These websites are not real. They have nothing to do with the websites they are purporting to be. They are put up by thieves trying to steal your credit card number and account information.

No bank, website, or web service will ever send you an email asking you to reveal your password or credit card information. Ever. Anything that you see that looks anything like this is either fake or an attempt to steal something from you.

If you see an email of this type that appears to come from one of these companies, don't click on the links in the email. Go directly to the website itself. You will probably see a notice on the main page of that website telling you about the scam.

We've mentioned this many times before but it really bears repeating: For your own security - don't believe anything that you get through email. It's almost always going to be a lie.