Spoofs

Just last week I was at Café Sierra Negra for dinner and Pam walked up to us and we said hi. She mentioned that she couldn’t open the pictures I sent her in an email.

I didn’t send her an email. I did, however, recognize the scam. She received an email with my name, but it was not from me. Unfortunately, that’s a fairly common phishing scam where another person’s name is in the From address of an email. Generally, if you click on the email address it will show the full description, and the actual email doesn’t match the name. It’s called spoofing, the same way a familiar name or phone number can come up in caller-id, but it isn’t a call from that person.

I get those pretty regularly, but I just delete them. The person hasn’t been hacked, so there’s nothing they can do because they really don’t have anything to do with it. Lately, my name has been used in this spoofing email as someone else told me the same thing happened to them a few weeks ago.

These emails are very short, usually saying something like, Hey, do you recognize the person in this picture? And then there’s a link to click on. DON’T click the link. I don’t know what it does but it can’t be good.
If you get an email with a link in it, Do Not Click On It, unless:

• You are expecting this email.
• The email has personal references in it so you know it’s legit.
• You are looking for trouble.

If you do click on it, maybe nothing will happen. If so, then good. On the other hand, you might want to run your anti-virus program, and your anti malware program, just to be safe.
 
Carol get’s a different kind of thing via FaceBook Messenger. These can happen when a person’s FBM account HAS been hacked, which isn’t all that uncommon. If it seem suspicious, i.e. this person doesn’t normally message you with links, etc, then delete the message and let the person know, via something other than FBM, that their account may be hacked.  

Note from Carol: Facebook Messenger tends to get hacked.  Don't use it to send or receive links.

Rule of thumb is, don’t click on a link you aren’t expecting. Don’t click on a link from a stranger. Don’t click on a link from “UPS” when they say your package was held up and if you don’t click the link and give them all your personal info they will send the package away.