E-mail scams and phishing attempts evolve constantly, hoping to take advantage of the latest trends and current events. Although the e-mails change, the people behind them inadvertently send up the same warning signs again and again. SWITCHED dug through mountains of spam to find the most prevailing trends. Here are some warning signs to help you spot a hustle the next time one lands in your inbox.
1. Requests for personal information
No legitimate organization will ask for your social security, bank account or PIN number via e-mail – and none will include a link, sending you to a form to enter it.
2. Watch for typos or spelling mistakes
Scam artists are street smart, but many flunked basic grammar (or barely speak English).
3. Clickable Web links in e-mails
What might look like a legitimate address is often linked to a third-party site that looks official, but is actually run by thieves and scammers.
4. ‘Market research’ or surveys that ask you for personal information.
You’ll be asked to fill out a survey or enter a contest – requiring you to give personal information or “log on” to your account. Once you’ve done so, the scammers can use it themselves.
5. Stock tips from random people or companies
It’s probably a “pump and dump” scheme. The sender already owns shares – and when you and others act on the “tip,” the stock price soars and he sells fast – leaving you with virtually worthless shares.
6. Attachments in e-mails from anyone you don’t know
It’s almost always a virus or spyware meant to steal your personal information
7. Wordless e-mails
Some legitimate looking “e-mails” are actually just images. The danger with these is that clicking anywhere in the body takes you to a suspect Web site – where you may be fooled into entering personal information, or the scammer may slip spyware onto your machine.
8. Outdated information
Some scammers like to pose as technical- or customer support from a company you associate with – but fail to keep up with current events.
9. Red-flag phrases
If you see the phrases “verify your account,” “you have won the lottery” or “if you don’t respond within XX hours, your account will be closed,” it’s a scam – every time.
10. Generic greetings
While you can’t trust every e-mail that knows your name, you can definitely ignore the ones that start “Dear member” or “Hello friend.”
1.Michael Arrington - Blogger/publisher, TechCrunch.com
2.Steve Ballmer – CEO, Microsoft Inc
3.Jeff Bezos – Chairman and CEO, Amazon.com
4.Sergey Brin – President and Co-Founder, Larry Page – Co-Founder, and Eric Schmidt – Chairman and CEO, Google Inc
5.Dries Buytaert – Founder and Lead, Drupal.org
6.Pete Cashmore - founder, Mashable.com
7.Jean-Francois Clavier - Founder and Managing Partner, Softtechvc.com
8.Bram Cohen - Cofounder, BitTorrent Protocol
9.Drew Curtis - Founder, Fark.com
10.Nick Denton - Founder, Gawker Media
According to laptoplogic.com
According to PC World…
According to Sentry Parental Controls…
- Hitting the escape key should freeze any animated GIFs on a web page.- Middle-clicking on a tab is a fast, easy way to close tabs. But it can’t currently be aborted — what if you click your middle button on a tab and then realize that you don’t want to close that tab? On Firefox you can move your mouse off the tab before releasing the button to abort closing the tab. That doesn’t work on Chrome right now.
- If I start typing “Google webmaster blog” into the Omnibox, it offers to search Google for “webmaster blog.” I’m a power user, so I want a way to turn that quicksearch off. I type a lot of searches of the form [Google X Y Z] but that doesn’t mean I want to search on Google for [X Y Z].
- Chrome doesn’t recover submitted form data as well as Firefox if you have to click the back button.
- There’s a weird interaction between WordPress and at least the current dev version of Chrome. If I select some text and click the “link” button when writing a blog post, I get a pop-up that already contains “http://”. The text “http://” should be selected so that I can delete it or paste over it easily. Right now I have to select the text and then delete it. This is really annoying.
- One thing I love about Chrome is that you can type ‘t’ in the omnibox and it will suggest something reasonable like “techmeme.com” and you can just hit return to go there. But if you’ve been to a hostname that exists (e.g. if you’ve visited a valid internal server at http://t/ ) then you have to type ‘te’ before the “techmeme.com” suggestion comes up, because Chrome assumes that you want the server with that name. I want to be able to right-click and delete any Omnibox suggestion. Then ‘t’ will suggestion techmeme.com again.
- I’m a weirdo, but I want the ability to add user styles so that I can (say) highlight nofollow links. So I want the equivalent of userContent.css that Firefox offers.
- A friend pointed this one out to me: If you’re using a proxy url and get on a VPN, Chrome can take 20-30 seconds to refresh/reload the proxy script. I think Chrome might use a Windows-wide service, which is why it takes a while? In Firefox you can click a “Reload” button to force a refresh of the proxy configuration URL.
- Chrome doesn’t have that many options now, but eventually I’d love the equivalent of Firefox’s about:config method of changing settings.
- I don’t know if this is a Chrome issue, but when I use Chrome with Twitter, copying and pasting urls/text in the text box can be weird sometimes, e.g. you copy/paste urls and it copy/pastes from a different location in the text box. I don’t know how to describe it, but people who use Chrome and Twitter a lot might have seen this too.
According to Matt Cutts…
According to Eric Brantner…
#1) Will Ferrell, Chris Henchy and Adam McKay
#2) Will.i.am
#3) Ashton Kutcher
#4) Oprah Winfrey
#5) 50 Cent
#6) Stephen Colbert
#7) Radiohead
#8) Peter Gabriel
#9) Tila Tequila
#10) Martha Stewart
According to PaidContent.org’s The Econoclast10.
1- Socialstainable
2- Viruseful
3- Scrollax
4- Emotrics
5- Blickroll
6- Intercommunes
7- S’more Locater
8- Twiggles
9- Grokment
10- Facehook
#10. Is Anyone Listening?: Wireless Carriers
#9. Sorry, We Already Gave: Office 2007
#8. Needs To Change Its Spots: Apple “Leopard” OS 10.5
#7. Cannot be Completed as Dialed: Voice Over IP
#6. Un-Neutral: The Broadband Industry
#5. The Great, The Bad, The Ugly: Apple iPhone
#4. In a Sorry State: Yahoo
#3. The Anti-Social Network: Facebook Beacon
#2. What Is It Good For: The High-Def Format War
#1. No Wow, No How: Windows Vista
According to PC World.
10. Adobe Acrobat Reader
9. RealPlayer
8. Skype
7. Ad-aware
6. iTunes
5. WinZip
4. Firefox
3. Naptser
2. Winamp
1. ICQ
According to cnet.com
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