Comments on: 4+ Tips to Expose E-Mail Scams – Internet Scams Part I

By: Jake Neeley

Jake Neeley — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 21:38:21 +0000

Shawn, thanks for this note. This is a common scam for those who have registered a domain. In addition a common scam I see is a letter stating that your domain is expiring and it needs to be renewed. In reality it is a company trying to steal your registration from your current registrar.

By: Drew Kopf

Drew Kopf — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 14:27:52 +0000

I find it helpful to have e-mails presented to me in text rather than in html format;I can’t see the images and fancy fonts but I can see the code that produces them. E-mails from real people are generally in straight text in my experience. Those I can read and deal with or delete. If its coded and something I want to access like a newsletter I like to read, it’s easy enough to click on an icon to see the page in a browser. That way I can sort real inquiries from solicitations and possibly evil seekers. Granted, the e-mails are dull and boring but they are usually safer and unoffensive looking too.

By: Shawn Sorrell

Shawn Sorrell — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:41:52 +0000

I’ve received this email quite a bit lately so thought it might be worth posting some details. This email contains a virus that is in the form of an attachment. The body contains something like the following

“We are contacting you in regards to an unusual activity that was identified in your mailbox. As a result, your mailbox has been deactivated. To restore your mailbox, you are required to extract and run the attached mailbox utility.

Best regards, mydomain.com technical support.”

The mydomain is always one of the domains I own. I am technical support for my domains so this one was easy for me to spot even if my anti virus program had not singled it out.

By: Jake Neeley

Jake Neeley — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:31:23 +0000

I agree with you all, there is much to be learned in this arena and needs to be visited periodically due the changes tat occur almost every day. As technology advances so does a spammers ability to reach us.

Thanks again for the additional information

By: Shawn

Shawn — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:47:04 +0000

I’ve actually gotten emails from “WestHost” much like the one you posted. Pretty simple for me to detect they are scams. First off the From field even without looking at the Header is often not the standard one used by WestHost… Let’s hope WestHost stays consistent on that. A quick right click then looking at Options I can see the header of the email. A glance shows me I did not originate from WestHost.

I have seen an increase of Spams that simply use RE: Or FWD: without any other text for the subject… Come on spammers if it was really an RE or FWD it would have the text of the original subject after it.

You mentioned this in the blog post but I wanted to repeat it here. Do not click on links in such emails. If you have an account with our bank then use the URL you have bookmarked for them or type it in. You got it when you signed up with them and I doubt it is going to change.

By: Susan Byrtus

Susan Byrtus — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:06:57 +0000

As a Certified Identity Theft Risk Management Specialist, I read your “Tips to Expose Email Scams” with great interest. Kudos to you and Westhost for educating the public!

There is much that the general public does NOT know about online security and more specifically, Identity Theft.

[message truncated]

Respectfully at your service,

Susan Byrtus, CITRMS

By: Kawika

Kawika — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:59:23 +0000

Thanks for the great post. I love snopes.com! I check everything fishy I get thru email against it. Also be aware of scams that have links like http://facebook.com.somedomain123.ru/page.html – people won’t recognize the subdomain and think since it starts with Facebook, it must be Facebook! In reality, it goes to somedomain123.ru.