Well, sometimes we get teaching opportunities…..
A piece of spam made it through our filter. While we do try to eliminate all spam, the reality is that some of it will always make it through. Of all of the email in the district, roughly 67% of it is spam that is deleted prior to anyone seeing it.
What we’ve done:
- We’ve intercepted any remaining instances of this email and deleted them.
- We’ve started blocking the web page that this email links to.
- We’ve added the email into the SPAM learning filter.
- We’ve blocked this sender.
Since you’ll be dealing with email (both at work and at home probably), here are a few tips to help you decide whether or not something is spam…
- If you mouse over a link (but do NOT click on the link), it will reveal where the link is going. The part that is important is the first three sections. [Here we go….let’s say that you mouse over a link (without clicking on it) and the following address shows up https://www.myrussiantheft.com/bankofamerica.com/users.html – you may think that this relates to bank of america since it is in the web address. However, it is the first three parts that are important. Thus:
- Part 1: https or httpss – the s means that it should be a “secure” site.
- Part 2: www.domain – this is made up of everything on both sides of the first period. This is where the most important part (for our purpose) is. This is where the link will really take you.
- Part 3: whatever is after the second period. This should be .com or .net or .gov.
- Part 4 is everything else: this matters little for our purposes right now. This is frequently used to “trick” users into thinking that the link is legitimate by adding parts that “look good”.
- Thus in the case above, the site that you are going to is really myrussiantheft
Be suspicious if…
- If the signature is generic, be suspicious.
- If there are lots of spelling errors, be suspicious.
- If something “just doesn’t seem right”, be suspicious.
- If the site asks for both your user name (or email address) AND a password, be suspicious.
- If something is addressed generically (Dear Email User, Dear ____, etc) be suspicious.
- If the return address doesn’t match what you would expect, be suspicious.
Please note that this is not a comprehensive list. These are just a few guidelines to help you stay safe on the internet. SPAMer’s are constantly upgrading how they attempt to get your information.They have gotten much better at copying logos and making things look legitimate. Additionally, it is really easy to make an email seem to be coming from somewhere else (this is akin to sending a piece of mail with a return address on the outside of the envelope- really easy to fake).