Scam alert, people. That’s right boy and girls, it’s everybody’s favorite time of year when the Internet scammers come out of hibernation to try and rip off everybody in sight. What the heck am I yammering on about? The recent bombardment of mass mailings try to get people to hand over their login information for specific banks and to their PayPal accounts. To the untrained eye, these e-mails are pretty darned convincing. Legitimate looking URLs, official sounding e-mail addresses, and they even have fancy job titles that would make you honestly believe that these guys are for real.

So they think they can get me, huh?

I received an e-mail from what appeared to be my bank. After I opened it I determined it to be fake based on what they were asking me to do. The biggest indications to this fact were the numerous spelling errors within the e-mail. Grammar errors are one thing, but come on, we all have a spellchecker, for Pete’s sake. After contacting my bank to let them know that I had received this, we both got a kick out of how lame this e-mail really was. Spelling errors, missing words - it was pretty obvious. Our best guess is that it is part of a much larger “phishing” expedition. It would seem that the perps are hoping that someone will overlook the poor spelling, browse to the included Web site URL, and login with the customer’s login information. While we may be able to see through this with little effort, many of your clients/friends may not be able to as easily. Do them a favor and let them know that this problem is beginning to resurface again. While this may seem rather silly to take the time to do, it might just save someone you know a lot of time and money.

Let’s get digital,
Matt Hartley