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Raw Bytes Computer News KPBX FM 91.1 Radio National Public Radio Network Frank Delaney Producer Broadcast on Wednesday Morning 7:35 AM During Morning Edition Support Public Radio ! The Theater Of the Mind |
In computer news this week 06/07/2008 There’s many things you can
do to prevent falling for an email scam, also known as Phishing Probably
the best thing you can do is be aware of the problem, and know that your
Bank, credit card companies, nor the IRS are going to send you unsolicited
letters asking for your financial information and access codes. If you
didn’t ask for it, you shouldn’t respond to it. There are
many sites on the Web that tell you about Phishing scams. Usually your own
bank or financial institution has one. For
example, US Bank offers a really good Phishing information page: US
Bank Email Fraud Information and Help
and in
the case of the IRS Economic
Stimulus Phishing scam I talked about last week – the IRS has a good
Phishing information site: IRS Phishing
Information
And there
are many Phishing information websites, like http://www.antiphishing.org/ But primarily you need to treat
any unsolicited email about your financial information with high suspicion. The next
thing is to use a browser than can detect scams, and the current versions of both Internet
Explorer 7 and Firefox are supposed to detect bogus sites, but they’re
not bullet proof. I’ve
done several shows about how the web is a big candy store,
and anything you can see – graphics or complete web pages –
you can get. That’s how Phishers and Hackers are able to make perfect
copies of your bank’s web pages – they just copy them off the
internet and put them on their own bogus sites. Here’s a couple more safety
rules - Look up and Look Down ! If you do
click on a link in a suspicious email which says it’s taking you to a
website – look up in the Location Window of your browser –
that’s the window at the top of your screen that shows you where you
are on the Web. It should always show the name of the website. Look up - By looking up I mean look up at
the Location Bar window in your
browser that shows the website you’re at: The real IRS website shows this in
the browser Location Bar Window:
The fake IRS website showed a string of numbers – and then the IRS website name:
The numbers you see first are
actually the IP address of the bogus site, which in this case is also
forged. If you see numbers when you go to
a website – this is a warning sign to stay away! Then Look Up and Down – On a
supposedly secure site for financial transactions - The location bar should start with
https – meaning secure – and then should show the name of the
company you’re dealing with, in this case Elderly Instruments.
Then look down to the right corner of your browser
window and you should see a security certificate verifying it is a secure site. You can
click on the padlock Secure Site icon
But if at this point your anxiety
is up and your ears are laid back – because you didn’t initiate this email
transaction – click off the site and have the peace of mind that
you dodged another cyberspace phishing bullet. |
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For Raw Bytes This is Frank Delaney (C) 2008 MTA Micro
Technology Associates http://www.mtamicro.com/kpbx.html PO Box 31522 Spokane, Wa 99223-1522 (509)624-7230 |
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