As difficulty economic times continue, fraudsters are turning increasingly to on-line theft, the most common of which are various types of emails:
1. Advising you to update you online banking security
2. Advising of suspected fraudulent activity on your account
3. Overseas investors looking for you to invest in their expansion
4. Overseas Lottery wins – you need to pay first to collect you prize
5. Lawyers with clients that have left large amounts of money for you again seeking upfront payment
6. Emails from Couriers that have a parcel for you requiring either a payment for duty or print an invoice to collect the parcel
How do you tell if it’s SPAM? Be suspicious if:
1. It’s from someone you don’t know or a business you have no relationship with (i.e. NOT your bank!)
2. If it asks to you to click a link or open and attachment
3. It asks for money up front
4. Offers benefits that are too good to be true
5. Company Logos and/or details of their registered office are absent
6. Not particularly well written (poor grammar)
7. It’s not personalised with you name
8. You get many similarly worded communications but from different Companies/businesses
What if it looks OK?
In most cases there will be a Link - check the authenticity by hovering your mouse over the link – most email software will show you where the link is actually going to - if it is not the same as the sender – then it’s most likely not save to proceed.
Be safe on Line 1. Do keep your antivirus software up to date. Good software is available free (Avast, AVG and Microsoft Security Essentials being the best known)
2. Keep your operating system software up-to-date (ensure automatic updates are enabled)
3. Use the latest email software and keep that up-to-date too (many effectively mange most of the SPAM)
