Tag Archives: Spam

Phishing emails – tell-tale signs it’s not from who it says it’s from

Emails aren't always from who they say they're from!

Emails aren't always from who they say they're from!

I’ve just received quite an ingenious phishing email… well it’s slightly more intelligently conceived and implemented than the usual type

Yesterday I made an order on Amazon and today I get an email, pertaining to be from Amazon, telling me that my order has been cancelled!

Firstly, even though I’m sure that me receiving an Amazon order cancellation the day after making an order with them is purely coincidence, for me, as for many other people, Amazon account for the majority of everything I personally spend online so the chances of me having made a recent purchase are pretty high. Anyway, even if I hadn’t, my first reaction would have been ‘has my account been hacked?’ so I would have wanted to find out.

Secondly, it’s perfectly within the realms of possibilities that an order may have been cancelled –cards get stopped, vendors run out of stock… there are numerous reasons for this so you’d have no reason to, on first glance, assume that the email was legitimate.

Thirdly, the spelling and grammar was correct. On the one hand it amazes me have many grammatical mistakes there are in the average phishing email. I’m sure some of these are to avoid detection by spam filters but many other are simple mistakes that even pasting the text into Google or Word would fix. On the other hand, anyone stupid or foolhardy enough to think that to conduct a phishing campaign is a good idea can’t be the sharpest of twigs!

There are some massive tell-tale signs, though, that this email is not from who it says it’s from!

The one that first alerted me was that Amazon don’t send account and order notifications in that format using that font. If you’re on their mailing list, you’ll no doubt get your ‘deals of the week’ in rich text but everything else pertaining to your account is in a pretty standard format – order confirmations, despatch notes, etc. – will be standard format. I wouldn’t be surprised if the person who sent this email had never ordered anything from Amazon!

The other this I always do is check the domain within the links. This one wasn’t Amazon so I wasn’t clicking it

You can also use your common sense and examine the email a bit more closely. I have 8 email account sI use through Outlook and many of these are catch-all addresses. I only, however, have one email address registered with Amazon. If I get an email pertaining to be from Amazon to an email address I haven’t got registered with them, I know it’s probably not legitimate.

The advice is as always; if you get an email asking you to click on a link to go to a site; don’t do it. If you’re not sure, open your browser and go directly to the website. Log in there and then check your messages or account status directly.

Seven Creative December Newsletter (12 December 2009)

Introduction

Seasons Greetings! In this issue; AVG update time, steps to avoid spam, Seven Creative affiliate scheme and a very useful Outlook utility.

Is your Anti-Virus software up-to-date?

If you’re using AVG free edition version 8.5 or earlier on Windows, you will more-than-likely need to upgrade to version 9 in December. To check which version of AVG you have, double-click the AVG icon in your task-bar (the red, blue, green and red square at the bottom right corner of your screen) then look at the bottom-left area of the AVG window when it opens.

To upgrade to version 9, follow the links from the AVG window or click here to go straight to the download location: https://tinyurl.com/cbe7be (I’ve shortened a very long URL here if the address looks a bit unusual!). When installing, watch out for the ‘Yahoo toolbar’ option. If you don’t want it, be sure to un-tick the box – it’s not a mandatory element of the AVG software.

Making money with the Seven Creative affiliate scheme

Did you know we have recently rolled out an affiliate scheme? Send someone in our direction (make sure you let us know to expect their call) and you’ll receive 10% of the value of the services they purchase including business stationery, leaflets & flyers, websites & blogs and marketing campaigns. We save time and money from doing less marketing and you could receive a nice cheque in the post. Simples! Please contact us for full terms and conditions.

Getting spammed?

Unfortunately, Spam is fact of life at the moment for all email users. The best we can hope to do is cut the number of spam emails we receive by taking some simple steps.

If your website is hosted on our Namesco hosting facility, you can blacklist persistent spammers by logging in through your control panel, selecting ‘email & ftp’ then adding an email address to the ‘blacklist’. Emails received from that address will in the future be automatically rejected. (Conversely, adding names to the ‘white list’ will mean they are automatically accepted).Also, you can change the sensitivity of your spam filter. The anti-spam software rates each received email according to how likely it thinks that its spam. For example, if the rating is more than 6 they are accepted. If the rating is less than 6 they are rejected. Change the threshold to 5 and the sensitivity is increased. Go to your control panel, ‘email & FTP’ then select ‘spam filtering’.

Websites hosted on our Zoom facility, log into your control panel and enable ‘Spam Assassin’

Things you may not know

Seven Creative offers the full range of business marketing services including websites and email accounts, however, you may not know we also offer:

  • Social network marketing
  • Pay-per-click advertising
  • Print media advert design
  • Email marketing and mailing list management
  • Regular website backups
  • Plus much more

Please call us for more information

A useful utility for Outlook

If you use Outlook on a Windows computer, you’ll no doubt either already regularly back-up your emails or at least, it’ll be on the to-do list. It’s a simple procedure; select ‘file’, ‘Import and export’, ‘Export to a file’, choose the format for the backup (personally I use Personal Folder File (.pst), select ‘Personal folders’ (tick the ‘Include subfolders’ box) and the click ‘Next’ to choose a location for the back and begin). The problem comes when you have a lot of large attachments. Your backup file may end up being huge and take an age to complete. A quick work-around is to remove all the email attachments saved in your Outlook and put them all in a separate file on your computer. A free utility that does this for you is available from www.kopf.com.br/outlook/. Download, install and you’ll get a little toolbar along the top of your Outlook window called ‘Attachment remover’. Click it, follow the instructions and hey-presto, all your attachments are neatly put in a separate folder and replaced with short-cuts in your emails meaning your Outlook backups should now be a whole lot quicker.

That’s all folks

This brings us to the end of the Seven Creative December newsletter. From all us here at Seven Creative Towers, we’d like to wish you all the best over the festive season for the New Year.