Holiday season and a bad economy are two big catalysts for identity theft. Thieves are also getting more sophisticated in their approaches. mysecurepc.com has a huge list of identity theft tips. One thing of note is that 63% of identity theft sources are preventable by the consumer.
mysecurepc.com has updated its tutorial on backing up a Windows computer. Included are things such as:
Here’s a list of current Hotmail scams making their rounds:
1. Verify your Hotmail account before it is closed.
They are looking for your user name and password.
2. Your friend is asking you to wire money to a foreign country.
This one again. It is generally signed by someone you know so watch out.
3. A friend invites you to the grand opening of a new online store.
Of course, when you go and purchase something all the credit card information is now stolen.
4. Your account will expire in so many days.
They are trying for your Hotmail username and password.
5. Look who deleted you from MSN.
You are supposed to go to a (bogus) website and enter your credentials to find this information, which by the way, cannot be known (according to MSN).
6. You just won the lottery.
Egad. Doesn’t anyone learn?
7. Fake MSN featured offer.
You are supposed to buy this with your credit card. You know the rest.
What if you get a phishing email?
Click on Report phishing scam to report it. Do not reply to them or click on any links in the email. Period.
Doug
You may get an email soon with an airline ticket invoice attached. The email states the tickets are attached. Unfortunately, the attachment is not a document but an executable file which installs a worm on the hapless user’s computer which downloads more malicious software. The email infers the recipient’s credit card has been charged for the tickets…scaring some to open the attachment. The attachment is named e-tickets.doc.exe. For many computers, the .exe will not show up if it is saved since the default of Windows explorer is to hide well-known extensions.
Doug
Before you lock in to a new phone number, do some quick due diligence. Go to callercomplaints.com and search on the new telephone number to make sure it is not “polluted”. Getting a new phone number that has a bad history, especially for a business, can be devastating. It is not worth the time to deal with nagging creditors calling about someone you don’t know (i.e. who had the phone number previously). Don’t forget to register your new phone number on the national do-not-call registry.
Doug
Recently Smartlab Software changed telephone numbers and immediately registered with the national do not call registry.
One of the problems with a new telephone number is you have no idea of its history. The day we changed over the uninvited phone calls started. They were from a collection agency looking for a Kathleen. They were ususally automated but sometimes from a call center in India. The phone numbers showed up in caller id but emanate from several sources. After repeatly hanging up on them, not answering, telling them we were a business and not Kathleen, we finally filed a complaint. Though technically the phone calls were not from telemarketers, we thought the complaint process would work.
And it worked. Within one day the phone calls stopped. BTW, only the name of the business and the city and state were given in the personal information section.
For those of you who don’t know, a unique ID is assigned when Google Chrome is installed. Every time Chrome is launched, guess who knows who launched it. There is a little utility that erases the client ID before Chrome is launched; a little bit more privacy for you.
Download the Chrome Privacy Guard and run it instead of Chrome. The CPG will eradicate the client ID then launch Chrome. Easy.
Doug
Just to let you know about a privacy issue with Google’s Chrome browser. The browser has a feature called Auto Suggest which, as the name implies, suggests similar web sites for the one you are browsing. The privacy issue comes in because the URL is sent to Google, along with a plethora of information, for analysis and the suggestions are sent back. Unfortunately, this feature defaults to ‘on’.
To turn it off: Tools > Options > Basics tab > Manage (under default search) > uncheck “Use a suggestion service to help complete searches and URLs typed in the address bar”.
Read more about Google auto suggest service.
Doug
I received a very real-looking email from PayPal with the subject line: “PayPal Notification: Payments and Statement”. The crux of the message was they debited my business account for $32.00. No reason given.
The link to view my Account Summary contained paypal.com but hovering my mouse over it showed it went to somehost.lan.io domain…obviously a fake.
The email was forwarded to spoof@paypal.com which brought a quick reply saying the email was, indeed, a spoof and they will take care of it. This event goes back to one of mysecurepc.com’s tenets: do not click on any email link.
Doug
Subscribe to this site's RSS feed.