Spot eMail Scams

October 22, 2007 by David.

PC World has a nice write-up on how to spot eMail scams.  Having a good sense of disbelief and a few basic cautions will save you time and again.

eBay and PayPal have pages dedicated to helping you identify the whether an eMail purporting to be from them is fraudulent, things like how they put your name in the eMail and the layout of known scams.  The are also very responsive if you eMail them asking if something you received is legit.

If you are active on the Internet at all, you need to have multiple eMail accounts.  A minimum of three in my book.  Use one for known & trusted business, like your banks and PayPal.  Pay attention to what the “to” eMail is when you receive eMail.  Not only will you have a permanent eMail address you won’t have to change with these accounts, you can quickly tell if a message “from” eBay but it isn’t the account you use with them.

Have a second for “trash.”  You know, when you have to sign up for something you are pretty sure you don’t want to hear from again but have to supply an eMail address.  Check it occasionally and when you start getting a lot of trash, just kill it and make a new one.

Third, have an account for your usual eMail communications - your friends and associates.  You know eventually this will pick up spam because there is always someone who sens eMail to a group and exposes them all the addresses (instead of using blind copy) and eventually that will get in the hands of the wrong person.  However, this won’t soak up spam real fast and so you might change the account every year or two to keep it clean.

You might have a fourth if you are forced to use only one specific address from work.  That is a hassle because you don’t have a way to rotate it to keep it clean so just guard it carefully.  I even went so far as creating business cards with the company logo (the actually created them for me) with the “junk” business eMail.  I’d carry both cards and only give the permanent eMail to trusted insiders, giving away the junk eMail to everyone else.

Ok, that’s five accounts, but this system has worked well for me, especially since you can forward eMails and thus I only have to check one or two places.  Also, most good eMail packages will pull from multiple addresses.  For instance, Outlook will pull from as many mailboxes as you’d like and then you can add a display colum to show the “to” address to easily track which ones you want to open.

To get those accounts is really easy even if your personal eMail is xyz@comcast.net and your can’t-change-it-and-break-the-standard business eMail.  The easiest and cheapest way is to use hotmail, yahoo, or the like for alternate addresses.  However, to get a more official looking eMail, create a domain name just for eMail if you have to.  Heck, for six bucks per year for the URL and four bucks per month you can have your own domain name with more eMail addresses than you can possibly use from 1and1.com - well worth the cost if you care about spam.  Besides, who wouldn’t rather have yourname@CoolURL.com instead of name456@hotmail.com?  I’ve used 1and1 hosting service for years and it is one of the very cheapest out there for both hosting and domain name registration.  You will find their products very robust and well featured.  Click the 1and1.com link in the side bar to check them out!

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