Daddy can I have your old phone?!
Anatomy of an Email Scam
You Have Mail !
Take a look at the email scam below sent to one of my clients recently. At first glance, it appears to be a legitimate warning from the email system that the mailbox storage is almost full. However, like the majority of similar scam emails, it includes several tell-tale signs that it is fake.
Sample Scam Email
Email Scam giveaways:
Sender Address
Look at the sender address. If this was legitimate, it would come from your company’s email server so, for me, this would be something@sorrin.ie. But, in this case, it comes from something@doamin.com – not only is this just a generic “domain”, it isn’t even spelled correctly.
Greeting
Notice the greeting is to “Dear” and then your email address. This is because the scammer doesn’t know your name or anything else other than your email address. When the greeting is like this or a generic greeting like “Dear user”, alarm bells should always start ringing.
Take Action
The objective of the email scam is usually to trick you into clicking on a link to carry out their dastardly plan so something like “CLICK HERE TO VERIFY” is always included. Never click this but if you hover the mouse pointer over the text of a link like this, it will show the underlying URL or web address it is going to take you to. Again, you would expect this to be something related to your business domain name or one of the big email service providers like Microsoft or Google but not some random domain as is the case here. Of course, if you think about it, why would you need to verify that your mailbox is nearly full anyway?! Scammers are hoping they will spur you into action by fear and a sense of urgency – you must click here now!
Top 5 Tech Blogs To Follow
There’s a huge amount of tech info out there and it’s changing all the time. While you can keep an eye on one website to get an overview of what’s happening in the technology sector, you can never really get the broad picture without consulting a number of sources. Yes, big news will be seen everywhere so you’re likely to get the gist of what’s happening, but more often than not smaller issues can be of just as much interest to you.
Top 5 Tech Blogs
Cast a wide net and you’ll get a lot more useful information. Here’s our top five tech blogs and websites to watch in the year ahead.
How To Geek
How to Geek; the perfect blog for any tech geeks out there. You might never need to know how to do a lot of what they teach, but it’s a tremendous boon to your knowledge in general. After all, there’s no point studying each aspect of tech in isolation – you want to know how everything works together. Engadget Love them or hate them, Apple are a gigantic tech leader and if you don’t know what’s going on with their latest products then you don’t know what’s happening in a huge chunk of the tech world. Engadget are one of the most reliable unofficial sources of what the trend-setting corporation are up to, so if you want to know what might be coming down the tracks, this is an invaluable blog to consult.
Gizmodo
What was once attached to the defunct Gawker network is now a flagship blog of its own. In many ways Gismodo’s past links to Gawker are still very much in its DNA – they’ve often been accused of being the gossip columnists of the tech industry. But a kinder critic might praise them for holding the tech industry to the same standards other outlets apply to politicians.
Gigaom
If you want to know what’s ahead, look no further than Gigaom. As one of the largest blogs on the internet, they can afford to only hire the truly technology obsessed.
Mashable
Mashable have their finger on the pulse of the tech industry social media world. You know they’re the right blog for you if finding out what’s happening every other day isn’t enough. They can keep you up to date with what’s happening in the world on a second to second basis. It’s a great way to get involved with whatever conversation your colleagues in tech are about to have.