Stealth Email

One of the most dangerous cyber crimes is email phishing. Phishing is an identity theft that occurs in the web. In this scam, a person is being lured to divulge some personal information by scammers who take the identities of reliable people and legitimate organizations. One of the factors that make phishing very dangerous is that the websites, email addresses, and the information that scammers provide look almost authentic. Another reason phishing is dangerous is that your anti-virus and firewall cannot detect phishing emails. Your anti-spam cannot also prevent these emails from entering your computer system because phishing emails do really appear legitimate.

The phishing bait

Initially, a target victim receives an email. The email claims to come from legitimate offices, such as academic institutions and financial institutions. If the email looks authentic and if the address seems credible, the unsuspecting victim easily falls for the bait that scammers set. The victim would then give away important information such as bank account numbers, email passwords, and credit card numbers.

Don’t be the next victim

Keeping a skeptical eye on every email that you receive is one of the basic things that you can do to avoid being the next phishing scam victim. If you receive an email from seemingly authentic institutions that ask you for some information, you have to go directly to the institution’s official website and make inquiries. Security experts also recommend that you read the email as plain text. When you have identified a phishing scam, you can report it to the Federal Trade Commission or to the insitution which the phishing mail spoofed.

So far, the emails that have been sent congratulating someone for winning a lottery constitute 10% of this year’s sent emails according to the MessageLabs. This is actually three times more than that of last year. According to some, the economic crisis, which has started off at the end of the year, is among the most influential factors in the rapid increase in the number of emails with finance-related spams.

Kinds of email fraud

A spam claiming that you “win a million” is not just the only kind of email fraud online. In fact, there are actually many kinds of email fraud. One of these is this is spoofing. This fraudulent act involves the use of other people’s data to transact online.

In spoofing, the sender’s name and email address is altered or concealed from the recipient. Another kind of email fraud involves bogus offers. In this email fraud, items and services are offered for lower prices as baits to lure people in believing to the bogus offer. Usually, the purpose of this kind of email is to convince some people to divulge their credit card and bank account numbers. There is also the so-called phishing for data. In this kind of email fraud, the cyber criminal extracts information from the victim by making the victim believe that the authority requires some information about him or her.

Preventing email fraud

You have to be skeptical about email messages from unknown sources. You should not share your email accounts and passwords to other people. It is also important that you enable your anti-spam and anti-spyware so you won’t be an easy target for hackers.

Spam problems getting worse

The continuing economic instability caused the surging of spammers, according to some reports. The 2008 annual report of MessageLabs states that last year’s economic crisis only leads to an increase in finance-related spams, which is expected to get worse this year. Well, you don’t have to be surprised anymore if every time you surf the Internet, you will receive this mail congratulating you for winning a lottery. This is, of course, one of the effects of the worsening spam-related problem of Internet users.

How spam becomes a problem

In the first place, spam is unsolicited email. So opening this can really waste your precious time. Aside from this, a spam may contain spyware and viruses that could really put your network in jeopardy. Spam also eats up a lot of the network’s bandwidth. These are just some of the reasons spam-related problems should be taken seriously.

Tips to avoid spam

Though problem with spam is getting worse, it can still be solved. There are actually ways that could help you avoid or get rid of spam. One of the most basic ways to avoid spam is by not replying to a spam email. Another way is to activate the filter features of your email software. The filtering system will block the spam from being sent to your email account. You can also report a spam to the Internet Service Provider, although you have to determine first the origin of that particular spam.