Thursday 9 September 2010

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Unfortunately some people exploit the ease and relative low cost of sending emails for their own benefit.

Spoof / Fake Email

Spoof or Fake emails are emails that are not really from the people they appear to be from. They look genuine, often bearing the logo, trademark or design of a well known business, but they are nothing to do with them at all. Although the emails themselves are not harmful they can have serious consequences. Typically these emails will appear to be from a bank or a business like the on-line auction web site eBay asking to click a link in the email to confirm your log in details.

Although the link might look genuine it very probably will go to a fake copy of the web site, and entering your personal details just allows the sender of the email to "steal" your identitiy and use your credit card and other personal information. This is known as "Phishing".

If you are at all suspicious contact the business concerned at an email address or telephone number you obtain for yourself from their web site.

Spam / Junk Email

This is usually just annoying and causes no real harm, but you can protect yourself from being bothered by it. Take care who you give your email address to. A good idea is to have one email address that you give to friends and family, and use a different one when you sign up for services and buy goods on the Internet. You should then only get genuine email on your "personal" email address, but the other address is more likely to have the "suspect" emails. In any event you can often recognise the junk mail by the subject line. No matter how inviting it may seem (job vacanies, special offers, free vouchers) very often the email itself has nothing to do with the subject.

Some email software has the facility to detect Spam and Junk emails. It usually moves the emails in to a special "Junk" folder so you can be fairly sure that anything in the folder is not worth reading. You can also buy software that detects Spam and Junk emails that automatically deletes them.

Viruses and Other Threats

Probably the most common and damaging problems conveyed by emails (and other methods) are Viruses and Worms. These are a nuisance and are potentially very serious. In the simplest terms a virus is a program that replicates; that is, infects another program, part of your hard drive, or a document. Most viruses only replicate, though, many do a large amount of damage as well. A worm is a program that makes copies of itself; for example, from one disk drive to another. The worm may do damage and compromise the security of the computer.

Your first line of defence is your own common sense, simply don't open emails if you are not totally sure of the identity of the sender. Look out for clues like poor spelling in the subject line or unusual senders names. If your email software shows a preview of your emails turn this option off, as simply previewing an email can be enough to allow a virus it contains to operate and infect your PC. The simple answer is to invest in some Internet security software, this will help protect you against most potential threats - as long as you remember to keep the software up to date.

More Help

If you are concerned about any email your receive, contact the business who is supposed to have sent it to try and verify the content (in the case of a suspected spoof email) or try one of the web sites below: