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Topic: Beware of new phishing scams regarding financial takovers |
Wiz Feinberg
From:
Mid-Michigan, USA
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Posted 10 Oct 2008 11:11 am |
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The Rock Phish gang have updated their templates again, making it even easier to create phishing scam emails and websites. At the same time there is an increase being detected in honeypots showing spam emails containing phishing scams regarding supposed takeovers of your bank, or mortgage company. AS usual, they all lead to phony login pages designed to steal your credentials, then your identity.
Most banks or loan companies that you do deal with will address any email to your full legal name, as is on file with them. Most phishing scams use Dear Customer, or similar salutations. They don't know your actual names and use a generic template for all of the millions of spam emails blasted out each day, by Botnets.
Learn to identify legitimate messages from your bank, loan company, or investment company. Read the incoming header properties so that you can tell fakes and real messages apart. I will be writing a blog article about how to do this and will link to it in a new post, when it is online. In the meantime, you can read my Sticky post, at the top of this forum, about displaying email headers for reporting. That should get you oriented to digest the rest of the details I will be providing.
_________________
"Wiz" Feinberg, Moderator SGF Computers Forum
Security Consultant
Twitter: @Wizcrafts
Main web pages: Wiztunes Steel Guitar website | Wiz's Security Blog | My Webmaster Services | Wiz's Security Blog |
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Jim Eller
From:
Kodak, TN (Michigan transplant)
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Posted 11 Oct 2008 10:19 am
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Wiz,
Thanks again for some more important information.
Question:
In Outlook Express, In Box:
If I right click on a message, click properties, the Details tab and then Message Source... am I opening the e-mail??
Thanks,
Jim |
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Wiz Feinberg
From:
Mid-Michigan, USA
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Posted 11 Oct 2008 12:43 pm
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| Jim Eller wrote: |
Wiz,
Thanks again for some more important information.
Question:
In Outlook Express, In Box:
If I right click on a message, click properties, the Details tab and then Message Source... am I opening the e-mail??
Thanks,
Jim |
Jim;
That is precisely the right thing to do! You are NOT opening the email for rendering. You will read the entire contents in plain harmless text. You will not only see the header details, but also the actual destination URLs of all links, as opposed to what criminals want you to see.
FYI: MailWasher Pro displays emails in plain text, but in two fashions. One method shows all non-html text, provides clickable links, also showing the destination of links, and tells you about images that would be shown in HTML rendering. The second method displays the entire source code, with all links deactivated. This makes it safe to copy links and paste them into detective tools like WannaBrowser.
_________________
"Wiz" Feinberg, Moderator SGF Computers Forum
Security Consultant
Twitter: @Wizcrafts
Main web pages: Wiztunes Steel Guitar website | Wiz's Security Blog | My Webmaster Services | Wiz's Security Blog |
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Jim Eller
From:
Kodak, TN (Michigan transplant)
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Posted 12 Oct 2008 12:17 pm
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Thanks Wiz,
That is what I have been doing on any questionable e-mail but was never sure if I had "opened" it or not. I was just something I stumbled on.
Thanks for the clarification.
Jim |
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