I get a lot of phishing emails and I would like to make everyone aware of them whenever they arrive. However, it’s impractical to make a posting every day that I receive them as that is every single day so I thought I would introduce a new page where I can keep adding the new email scams. I can’t actually remember a day when at least one scam comes through my various mailboxes but I’ll only show them the first time they hit my mailbox (it would be a very long page if I listed all the duplicates).
The reason I want to flag them up is because I don’t want the scammers to succeed so by creating awareness I’m hopefully doing my bit. If everyone shares tips for identifying the scams and ways to prevent them having any effect then together we can put the crooks out of business and the internet and all the wonderful technological advancements can be used safely by all.
Before I share some of the scams with you I just want to make you aware of what’s in one of the latest attachments. It’s a particularly nasty virus known as “Cryptolocker” that encrypts your files, rendering them useless and then holds you to ransom for you to be able to decrypt them. To prevent this happening to you, always follow these simple rules:
- Never open any email attachments or click on links you were not expecting.
- Make sure you have regular backups to write-once media so it cannot be overwritten by a virus (use CD-R, DVD-R or DVD+R rather than CD/DVD+RW).
- Do not pay the ransom – if no-one pays they will soon give up.
See also, Stop the scammers: email rules to live by for more details of the precautionary steps to take to help prevent you from being victimised.
I mentioned examples of the email scams and rather than creating a new article each time one appears in my mailbox or adding to this article, I’ve created a separate 2014 email scam examples page.